I just have to share with you a traumatic occurrence in my life! I had put off shopping for clothes for many months, but the sales were great, so I picked out a few things and went into the dressing room. When I began to undress, I noticed that the store had replaced the ordinary mirrors with distorted ones, the kind that makes us laugh at the county fair. I appeared much shorter and much wider. I tried on the first item in my size, but the slacks that hung so beautifully on the dummy would go only to my knees. Perhaps, it was just the cut of the trousers, or someone had labelled it with the wrong size. I dressed in the next outfit and decided that I should try another mirror, so I went out to the three-way mirror outside the dressing rooms. To my horror, both mirrors were really bad. "Can I help you find another size?" the pleasant saleslady asked. As she was standing beside me in the distorted mirror, looking amazingly normal, I had to come to grips with the truth. I had gained weight in all the wrong places! Almost in tears, I carried my larger clothing to the checkout, pledging to lose weight.

On the way home, in an effort to cheer me up, my husband announced that what we needed was an ice cream sundae. He was right! As the creamy delight slid down my throat, I cheered up, and the awful images that I had just witnessed in the distorted store mirrors quickly faded from my memory!

Sometimes, I find myself doing this same thing when I read the Word of God. I see truth that makes me uncomfortable or seems too hard to apply to my life, and I want to turn away and forget what I saw. It seems too hard because I forget that the person in the mirror is a child of the King who is loved so much that He died for my sins, and that I can do anything that He asks me to do through Christ who strengthens me. That's when I need to reread James.

James 1:22-25 – 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 a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it — he will be blessed in what he does. (NIV)

Let's determine never to read God's Word and turn away. Just as the mirrors at the clothing store can give us a wake-up call, the Word of God will give us the truth about our lives. Let us devour His Word, and do what it says!

Prayer: Lord, help us to obey the truths found in Your holy Word and not to forget them. Amen.

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About the author:

Jeanie Nihiser <jnihiserj@gmail.com>
Geneseo, New York, USA
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