What God sees in your mirror
Experts say there are two kinds of responses when people look in the mirror. There is a set of people who, no matter their appearance, including flaws and wrinkles, say something like, "Not bad!"
These tend to be in the minority. The majority of people who look in the mirror zoom into every wrinkle, every flaw and every ounce they may have gained.
For them, regardless of what others see, the mirror screams out their flaws. It's the reason many don't like to look at photos of themselves. They key in on every single flaw, while people looking at them simply see them as they are and see the good.
An experiment done several years ago brought in individuals and their spouses. In the experiment, both spouses looked in the mirror and then recorded what they saw. Then, their spouses look at them and recorded what they say when they look at the other person.
The result: When a person look at themselves, their attention and written assessment went immediately to their flaws. Phrases like, "My hair is an ugly color"; "My chin sticks out"; and "My face has too many wrinkles" filled the evaluation sheet. However, when their spouses took their turn, the evaluations looked more like these phrases: "Her eyes light up a room;" "His face is rugged and handsome"; and "Her nose is my favorite nose in the whole world."
When the results were shared, each spouse read them with tears in their eyes. One set of tears for the negative self-evaluations, and another for the kind evaluations of their spouses.
In the end, the most commonly used phrase from one spouse to another: "I wish you could see yourself the way I see you."
A friend of mine has been the pastor of a church in Oklahoma for over 30 years. The church has consistently grown and does incredible work in a growing community. He says their favorite phrase as a church is: "God has made up his mind about you, and the news is good!"
What a thought! The Bible says God sees us through the eyes of grace, love and compassion. God does not see us as worthless. Instead, God sees us as worth all the time and effort needed to connect with us and to demonstrate his love for us.
An example of this is a passage from the Book of Romans, written by the Apostle Paul: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).
Remember that. If only we can see ourselves the way God chooses to see us. God, who knows us best, chooses to see us through the lenses of love.
