There is a joke told about a man finding a mirror. He had never seen one before and thought he had found his father's picture. His wife caught him looking at it one day with tears in his eyes. She determined to find out the cause of his tears. She found the mirror, and when she looked into it she exclaimed indignantly, "if that's the old hag he was crying about, he can have her."

If we could see ourselves, incognito, as the woman in the story, what a difference it might make in our appraisal of our lives.

James talks about another kind of mirror (Jas. 1:23-24) into which, ii we would look without putting on our defensive "makeup", it might help us. Here is some of that mirror James wrote about:

"Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3: 2-3). "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth  but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.., for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Mt. 6:19-21).

"Present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1).

"Wherefore, laying aside all malice and guile, and all hypocrisies and envies and evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (I Pet. 2:1-2).

"... let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. 12:1).

"Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him" (I Jno. 3:15).

"Flee fornication he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's" (I Cor. 6:18-20).

"Take heed brethren lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily  lest any of you be hardened THROUGH THE DECEITFULNESS OF SIN" (Heb. 3:12-13).

Now, how do you look--Really?

TRUTH MAGAZINE XIV: 13, p. 2

February 5, 1970