Magnifying glass verses a Mirror
In the wake of the last few weeks, I have spent a lot of time praying and pleading for our nation and our world. My heart has been completely broken over the loss, division, unrest and fear that have infiltrated throughout our nation and our world. I cried out to God to open our hearts and to break our hearts for only what breaks His heart. Several verses began to come to mind like Luke 10:27, for Jesus commands us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” Loving someone is a choice. It’s a choice that we make regardless of feelings because we choose to! God calls us to love Him first and our neighbor second. It’s the kind of love that validates who the person is in Christ not in our opinion of them. It’s the kind of love that would make us turn our heads and extend our hands to help someone; not just walk away, like the story of the Great Samaritan in Luke 10. It’s the kind of love that chooses to forgive someone just because you are forgiven. It’s the kind of love that keeps an eternal perspective. A love that knows the sacrifice that was required to obtain it.
If you are a Christ follower, you know this love. If you are a Christ follower, you accepted this love for yourself and if you are a Christ-follower then you know He came so that all may know Him and our command is to tell others of this love. Paul was very clear when he said in 1 Corinthians, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
We want change in many areas and we want to change what’s wrong in every one else, so we bring out the magnifying glass to focus on everyone’s issues. In this process I have to ask, have we forgotten the ‘man in the mirror’? Have we forgotten that true change – transformation – will only begin when our tongues seek to glorify God in all that we do and say? Have we forgotten the influence that we have in our family’s life by our words? If we stop long enough to reflect in the mirror and to allow God to purify our thoughts and to search our hearts, our lives would change and our families’ lives would change and it would filter out to our neighbors.
Magnifying glasses take an object and allow you to see things you did not see before. They allow you to pick apart and dissect deeper than you could see at first glance. If we look at the world through a magnifying glass, we begin to see all the sins of others and it is so easy to ignore our own. It’s only in the mirror that our focus on everyone’s faults changes to our own. Should we stay in our homes looking at ourselves all the time? No way! But we should take the first look at our own lives before we magnify the lives of others. Matthew 5:7 says, “you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” If we neglect the greatest gift of forgiveness given to us we will never be willing to forgive others.
Transformation has to start with US. With ME. With YOU.
So today the filter must change from the magnifying glass to the mirror as I allow Christ to mold me into the person He created me to be. I can then be the light in the world that will draw others to the One true light and I won’t be the reason they run from it.
