Mirrors or the Word Planted in You part 2

Last night on Shark Tank, one of the inventors (I don’t watch the show so not familiar with the terminology) presented the Skinny Mirror to the investors. This mirror makes a person perceive that they are five to ten pounds lighter than they are. The purpose is not to deceive but to uplift and give healthy body image and perception. That sounds kinda nice in theory to have in my home, but the thing about the mirror I have here is that it doesn’t really show me how heavy I really am. I am a medium size, and in the past few years, I’ve put on some pounds. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a heavier girl, but that could be because I don’t gaze into it for very long. Despite the fact that I don’t see the extra pounds, they are there.

None of the investors decided to invest because every one said it was deceptive, especially as many companies buy it and use it in dressing rooms. Customers now buy 20% more in shops with this mirror in them. The inventor’s thought was that flat mirrors are just as deceptive as her Skinny Mirror, so why not be positive, but investors disagreed. They even said that this could ultimately hurt various brands who had bought into the Skinny Mirror because when customers get clothes home and do not like what they see in the mirror, they may not continue to shop at those locations. They implied that it was better to be truthful and not deceptive, not just for customers, but for all involved.

This morning when all was quiet, I was reflecting on things. I told you that I have the gift of seeing, but this morning, I was doubting my sight. I was wondering if I had really been seeing the right things. I felt the Lord make a shift in me, in my heart. I can’t explain it really, but it was enough of a rearranging to mark it down.

In the Word Planted in You, I talked about how I’ve been given plenty of opportunity to hear the Word. Something I implied, but did not necessarily say was that hearing and seeing lead to doing. To hear, to see, is to do. If you see and hear, but are not moved to action, you’ve not really seeing.

This is what James talks about when he uses the seed illustration.

Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:21-27

When Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to the Pharisees and leaders and teachers, He spoke to people who regularly looked into the law and were not changed by it. Almost everything He spoke was from the Law, and as one commenter said here, He gave it a depth they had not considered.

They treated the Word like a Skinny Mirror for their souls and bound people up in rules. We still do this today with God’s Holy Word. But we also do this when we look at Facebook too long or other people too long, and we’ve not really been defined by the Holy One. I think the shift in me had to do with looking too much at people and not seeing them, but in seeing how they saw me, so that the focus was too much on me. If was as if God said to me, “I want you to be the eyes” in the body of Christ, to return to the original gift I’ve been given.

I love this tweet by my pastor because it was confirmation to my Spirit of the Holy rearranging He was doing.

Jesus shaped idolatry just says serve Jesus so that he will serve you, but real Christianity says serve the living God because you see him

— Jason (@jasonedwindees) October 24, 2015

God’s mirror is more like the mirror Harry Potter looks at in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. That mirror showed the viewer the thing they most wanted. Whether we know it or not, we most want to see God and to be reflections of His beauty. God’s mirror is at least twofold. It shows the viewer the truth of himself, simultaneously the grotesqueness of who he is and the beauty of who he is.

At lunch, my girl said that she liked to look in a certain teacher’s beautiful eyes when she gets into trouble because then it closes the gap of her humiliation and shame of her wrongdoing. She sees only the beauty of the teacher’s eyes instead of her humiliation. That’s exactly what God’s mirror does for each of us. When our eyes are focused on His, we see His beauty and reflect it.