If we were to modernize the old phrase “Mirror mirror on the wall”, we could change it to “Selfie Selfie on a stick”.

When is the last time you took a selfie? How many different attempts did it take to get that best angle and ideal expression? For the younger generation, their answer would amaze you. I know with my daughter, if she is trying to get a great shot to share on Instagram or Snapchat, she takes about 10 pictures. It’s about wanting to present ourselves in the best light to others. We don’t want people to see our flaws, our bad side, or anything that would give a negative impression of us. So, we spend time on our appearance, and posing just the perfect way to imply we are perfect and happy. But its just not true.

This is about self image. First of all, none of us are perfect. Our faces are lopsided, our hips are uneven, our noses are too big, our lips are too small, and our waistlines keep growing. Our hair is frizzy or limp, a dull color or has too much gray. At least, that is what we think. Society has trained us to believe this. Second of all, we aren’t really happy and smiling all of the time. (Well, except for those few we just can’t understand why they are always smiling!)

The concept of the “looking glass self” is: how we see ourselves doesn’t come from who we really are, but rather from how we think others see us.

Would you believe that mirrors weren’t invented by God? It’s true! When He created Adam and Eve, He didn’t tell her to be sure to impress her husband every day by closely examining her skin and putting on a full face of makeup, tweezing eyebrows and straightening her hair, because that’s how she needed to keep her man! God had made her perfectly in His image, as He had made Adam perfectly in His image. They saw each other as flawless, as is.

Enter the Sin Syndrome. When Adam and Eve took their eyes off of the Lord, they then looked at themselves, and were ashamed of who they were.

The real problem here is that we keep putting our focus on ourselves rather than on God. We spend more time judging how we look rather than how we act, or how we love, or how does God want me to be. Ultimately, this boils down to our pride.

Its time to ask ourselves, “How does God see us?” Does He judge us by our outside appearance? NO. What He sees is our heart. He sees our actions. What He sees is that His creation, you and me, were made the way He wanted us to be. He doesn’t reconsider that! In His eyes, we are what He planned. What we view as imperfections,  He views as what sets us apart from others. It’s our heart that He is concerned about.

Our lives are like mirrors which reflect what we face: either the Lord, or the world.

Our true beauty shines when we reflect the image of our Father. What does that look like? It comes from within. It is the confidence of who we are to him; a daughter, a son. It is the joy of knowing we have the hope of an eternal life with that Father. It is loving others of all types without regard to color, religion, or status. These things are what make us beautiful to our Lord, and to those that see our actions and our heart.

Perhaps we need to take a moment to examine our hearts and judge our decisions, rather than our appearance. Next, tell someone that they are beautiful, inside and out. It will likely make their day!

“As in water reflects the face, so the heart of man reflects the man.”
Proverbs 27:19

“For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face..”
I Corinthians 13:12

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like the man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.”
James 1:22-25

Food for thought: Do you appreciate your uniqueness? There is no one like you!

Fun facts: The concept of mirrors has been found going as far back as 8,000 years ago. In the beginning of mirrors, they were made of ground, polished obsidian (volcanic rock) in what is known as modern day Turkey. Later they were made of polished copper around 3,000 BC. Next came polished stone, then bronze versions. In 1835, a German chemist put a thin layer of metallic silver to the backside of glass. Thus began the mass production of the modern day mirror.

Photo by: Andre Mouton