Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

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But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. James 1:25 NKJV.

If you have read the story of Snow White and the seven dwarves then you know the origin of the expression “mirror, mirror on the wall’. Snow White’s step mum who had become queen wanted to be the fairest or most beautiful woman in the kingdom. So she would often stand before her mirror and ask “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” The mirror told her that Snow White, her step daughter, was more beautiful than she was. So the queen hatched a plan to kill Snow White.

As Christians, the Bible is our mirror (V 24). It’s the perfect law of liberty. It shows us how to truly live freely. Living freely is living from the snares of sin. Nothing ensnares a person like sin. And when we look at the mirror of God’s Word, we are supposed to do as it tells us.

Character and Integrity

As Christians, our character and integrity are of extreme importance to God. When we look in the Bible, we find a number of verses that speak to this and we discover God’s expectations of us.

 In James 1:27, God tells us that, He expects us to keep ourselves from being unspotted by the world. This reminds us that we are the salt of the world to preserve it from decay and also the light of the world to brighten the darkness (Matthew 5:13-14).  

Integrity plays an essential part in relationships and leadership. People expect integrity from their spouses, friends and leaders. Integrity connotes unity or oneness. The root word is integer, which means complete or whole.

The place of truth

We live in an era where the word ‘truth’ has taken on various shades of meanings. We come upon variants like ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’. As Christians, we believe the Word of God – the Bible- to be the absolute truth and our lives are premised and wound around this truth.

In God’s armour prescribed for Christians in Ephesians 6: 14 – 17, the belt of truth is the first piece mentioned. A belt is used to hold a garment together. God expects that we would be true to our calling and truthful to one another. Ephesians 4:25, tells us to speak truth to our neighbours because we all belong to the Body of Christ.

God also expects that we would be truthful to ourselves. In Psalms 51:6, we learn that He desires truth in our inmost parts. This was the confession of King David after he was convicted of the sin of killing Uriah and taking Uriah’s wife. D.L. Moody noted that character is what you are in the dark.   

When we realise that we have acted badly we must seek forgiveness from God and from the people concerned. This would help us renew our relationship with God and also relieve us of guilt.