In the fairy
tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Evil Queen asked the Magic Mirror
every morning, “Magic Mirror in my hand, who’s the fairest in the land?” The
mirror always replied, “My Queen, you are the fairest in the land.” Ah, but
along comes the incomparably beautiful Snow White. When the Evil Queen asked her mirror, it
responds, “My Queen, you are the fairest here so true. But Snow White is a
thousand times more beautiful than you.” The Queen didn’t like that, and she
set out to kill the beautiful maiden. But the Magic Mirror never lied, and in
the end, of course, the Evil Queen’s hatred and envy resulted in her own
destruction.
James 1:22-25
speaks about another mirror than never lies – the divine mirror of God’s
inspired word. James depicts that word as the mirror of the soul – “But be
doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not
a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he
observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is
not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what
he does.”
James describes a common but fatal spiritual mistake. He has in mind
people who encounter God’s message in the Bible – through
personal study or in sermons and classes, etc. Like gazing in a mirror, a look
into God’s Book is sometimes painful and unsettling. It reflects sins and shortcomings
in the ways we think, speak, and act. It prescribes remedies and divine
medicine that, while always helpful in improving us spiritually, sometimes are
not pleasant to our spiritual taste buds. And so, rather than taking a careful
look in the mirror and taking appropriate action to correct where needed, many
content themselves to listen to a sermon and quickly go away. The Bible shows
them where their life is dirty or wrinkled or in some need of correction. But
death and the judgment seem far away at the moment. So, rather than take what
might be some difficult but helpful and healthy and holy corrective action,
they scoot out of the building as soon as the last AMEN is said, and
consciously or unconsciously seek to repress and forget what they heard! But
the truth of God’s word and what it says about us and our relationship with God
doesn’t change because we chose to ignore it. No sir, no ma’am. We may forget
what our souls look like, even after God shows us in His word. But He doesn’t
forget unless our sins are washed away in the blood of Christ (Revelation 1:5;
7: 14; Acts 22:16; Hebrews 8:12)! Gamaliel Bradford, an American biographer and
dramatist, wrote about the lives and inner motives of other people. But he
candidly confessed his own thoughts about the Bible – “I do not read the New
Testament for fear of its awakening in me a storm of anxiety and self-reproach
and doubt and dread of having taken the wrong path, of having been a traitor to
the plain and simple God.” Wow – honest, but not very reasonable! We don’t look
in a mirror simply to see what looks bad. We look in it with a view to taking
corrective action that improves us.
Because the mirror never lies, we can trust it, even when
it points out a need for change. What do you see when you look in the mirror of
God’s word? It never lies. Think about it.
DanGulley
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