Mirror Mirror

We’re all familiar with the tale of Snow White. A story of pride, beauty, jealously, friendship, and love. One of the most intriguing aspects of the story finds itself in an inanimate object—the mirror on the wall. This mirror, far from stagnate, revealed to its onlooker who the most beautiful person in the land was at any given time. Of course, only contestants for the title would dare voice such an inquiry; and the pride of one self-admirer set the dark plot of the story in motion.
Unfortunately, mirrors spark similar dark reactions today. Though not in magical form, we use mirrors for one purpose—to check and enhance our appearance.
People spend hours each week looking into a mirror, which adds up to days—even weeks—over a period of a year. All that time dedicated to our outward appearance, which reveals more about our character than we’d like to admit.
Now before getting carried away, society ranks personal hygiene rather high, and rightly so. After all, who wants to bump shoulders with an individual reeking of BO in the supermarket? Yet, Americans tend to trade basic standards of hygiene and professionalism for over-the-top expenditures and lavish items designed to enhance appearance.
Is this such a terrible choice? Perhaps not if you can afford the luxury. However, if we’re spending more time in front of a mirror than we are allowing the Word to serve as a mirror to our hearts, we’ve crossed a line.
James says,
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. 
James 1:23-25
Baring some kind of brain malfunction, if we notice something askew in our appearance after looking in a mirror, we do something about it. We quickly pick the piece of food out from between our teeth, we pat down that puff of hair refusing to cooperate, and we remove the toilet paper stuck on our stiletto.
Observation + Action = Change
James hones in on this point brilliantly. If we claim Christ as our Savior, do the church thing, and crack our Bibles open every once in a while for a brief glance, but don’t live out His truth, we don’t change! Observing truth without acting on it leaves us dull and lifeless! Just as it makes no sense to look in a mirror and not pull the piece of spinach out from our teeth; it makes no sense to go through the motions without putting them to action.
The goal of being a disciple of Christ is to grow more and more into His image and glorify Him every step of the way. It’s to become practically who we are positionally in the Gospel. This only happens when we fix our gaze upon God, His truth, and His ways. The more we look to Him, the greater our yearning for action will be, and the more He’ll transform us into His glorious image.
Gaze into Him! Let His Word be the mirror you spend the most time in! What mirror do you need to trade in today?