For now
we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Who's the fairest of them all?
Certainly not me, I think, as I look at myself each morning. All
I see are the faults - hair out of place, beard in need of trim, jowly cheeks. Then,
to move myself on, I sometimes stick out my tongue at my image, which is my way of saying,
"It doesn't matter that much."
But it does matter some, I think. How else to explain our
fascination with mirrors? From the time we're babies, staring at our image, we
wonder, "Who's that?" Then as children, we goof at ourselves in the
mirror, making the worst faces we can possibly imagine. A bulge of the cheek here, a
twist of the nose there, and off we go.
As teenagers we start taking the mirror more seriously.
What do others see when they see me? Does that girl in the next row at school
think I look like Justin Timberlake or Frankenstein? And, oh my goodness, there's a
pimple!
Adults finally blend all those feelings. If we're courting or
going out, we want to look sharp. If we're feeling giddy, we still make faces in the
mirror. (Especially if we run across one of those funhouse mirrors… you know,
the kind that makes you short and fat, then tall and skinny?) And then there are the
times we look at the mirror in self-assessment. How can I resolve my family
disputes? Is this what I wanted to be at this time in life? When did I get so
gray?
Alas, the mirror doesn't tell us everything about that person we see
there. Unless you have one of those magical Harry Potter mirrors, what you see is
what you get. You wink, it winks. You smile, it smiles. You frown, it
frowns. You wonder if you're being the best person you can be … it looks
confused. And that's because you look confused. All we see is an image there,
nothing more.
If you want to see the real thing, to see the truth, that requires a
different approach. In 1 Corinthians13:12 of the Bible, we're told that we look into
the mirror and see an image dimly. Yet, it promises, the truth will come. How?
Through God's love. 1 Corinthians talks much of that special love. With God's
love, it states, all is possible. With it, we'll know the whys and wherefores of our
life and world. Without it, all is confusion and chaos. God's love is so
strong that he sent his only Son to save us. It's so strong, he created the world
for us. And it's so strong, he'll be there for us at the end.
And then, we won't just see wavery images in a piece of glass, worrying
about faults with what we see. We'll see the whole picture then.
