Take a Good Look in the Mirror

Everyone loves a good story. We all have our childhood favorites. I remember being enraptured by the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk. I knew it wasn’t real, but it seemed like such a great adventure. As I grew older, I could look back on those stories and see how they shaped the way I saw the world. I first learned to be brave thinking about Dorothy taking one step at a time down the yellow brick road. I would laugh and think about the foolishness of building with straw and the wisdom of building with bricks as I recounted the story of the three little pigs and the wolf huffing and puffing to blow their house down. But, truly the stories that impacted me the most were stories from Scripture. I remember being fascinated by the story of the plagues in Egypt, or Gideon with his fleece, wet and then dry, and his boldness in testing God. Peter walking on the water and Moses standing before the burning bush both made me think about how incredible it must be to stand in a place where you cannot help but fully trust in God.

As I have grown and met my own trials and bumps on the road of life, these stories have been the ones that sustain me. Dealing with loss in my life or feeling inadequate to the task of ministry, I have looked to Moses at the burning bush or Peter starting to sink into the waves and found that I relate to them in profound ways. Like Moses, at times I have looked to the Lord and said, “Surely you can’t expect me to do this?!? There are others who are much more prepared or equipped for this task.” At other times I have felt like Peter and desperately looked to God saying, “I thought I could do this, now I am in the middle of it and it’s just not going how I planned. Is this your will for me? Please don’t let me drown! I know my faith is weak…Help!!!”

Looking back on how these stories have lifted, shaped, and sustained me, I am reminded of a simple but helpful metaphor offered in James 1:22-25. The author writes:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it – not forgetting what they have heard but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do.”

Now that is sound advice. 

So often we take these stories from Scripture and set them up as only the stuff for Sunday school. We relegate them to the status of fairy tales and children’s stories. When we do this we miss the real power of the Word of God. It is with good reason that James calls it “the perfect law that gives freedom.” These stories are meant for you and me. They are real stories of real people who faced real issues in life. They are delivered to us to offer hope and guidance. They are meant to enable us to see what it looks like to follow God in every moment of our lives. If they are a mirror, they reflect what it looks like to follow God in our unique stories just as these biblical heroes did in their own life stories. Perhaps we should all pick up the Word this week, go back to some of those familiar stories, and take a good look in the mirror.