I will freely admit I try to avoid mirrors at all costs. I don’t care to look at a picture or video of me. In this way, I can avoid the truth everyone else sees – what I truly appear to others. You see, the image of me in my own mind is a completely different image. I see myself as continually 18, thin and not that bad looking. However, I have to face the truth in the mirror. And, to be completely honest, I don’t much like what I see.

But there is another mirror in our life. Not one we see visibly, it’s rather more obscure. It is our spiritual mirror and shows quite an opposite image of our spiritual beings. We believe our image in this mirror to be all of goodness, piety, and Christian charity. We see ourselves loving our fellow man and being a true follower of Christ. Yet, this mirror is also in our mind. If we saw ourselves in truth, the spiritual man God sees, we would see we’re not charitable or loving. We think of ourselves as holy and kind. But what does God see? All we have to do to see into this mirror is to compare our lives with the Word of God.

Do we love our neighbors as ourselves? Or do we talk behind our hands at some imagined fault, never looking to see our own faults.

Are we kind and gentle? Or do we delight at seeing others in trouble, thanking God it is not our trouble nor do we have to deal with it.

Let’s face it; we are not how we appear to ourselves. And it doesn’t really matter how we appear to others. What truly matters is how God knows us to be. Images are just that – images. It is what is in our hearts that truly matters.