BROKEN MIRRORS

People (you and I) are made in the image of God.

We are much like a mirror that reflects his traits and character, but thanks to our rebellious hearts that constantly fight our intended nature - constantly wage war against our Creator God, we now are a collection of shattered mirrors. We are no longer are capable of reflecting God as we were meant to, but rather we carry around our shards of glass and claim them as our own ‘goodness.’  “Look, see how kind I am to others.” “Look, see how generous I can be” “Look at my wisdom that I have.” When really all we have are these fragments of god’s intended plan for our character, strewn about through the character of humanity, but much more overwhelmed by the absence of God’s big picture- the absence of the whole mirror we were meant to be. We who are “kind” holding our kindness mirror, are much more overwhelmed by our negative that we hide. What we may reflect in kindness, we pitifully possess when it comes to gentleness, humility, wisdom, grace, servant-heartedness, and peace. There is not one person here who can reflect those good things of God as they were truly meant to be, not a single one of us can show others what God really meant for us: to be a picture of Himself.

And we can see this brokenness in our own life: in the life of others. We see that something is just not right here. We see that something is broken, and with fumbling childish hands we try to glue this mirror back together. And we fail. Miserably. Because not only have we forgotten what the mirror once looked like, but we don’t have the tools or the skills to actually repair it. And what’s more, we start tossing in whatever scraps of ‘good’ that we can find. And we wind up with a pitiful mess of what we think we are, who we think God is.

And if it were up to us, we would spend the rest of our history collecting these scraps and piecing together this miserable picture of ourselves, and a terrible picture of God.

Problem is, the only one who can really repair this mirror is the man who made it. And so, displaying all of these traits we try to mirror- all of these qualities of love, kindness, and compassion, God himself stepped into the shoes of man, came in the flesh to display for all of us his perfection and goodness. He himself was the perfect mirror, because he himself is himself.

The Christian life is not simply one of seeing our brokenness and God accepting us anyways. It’s certainly no less than that, but it’s so much more. The Christian life is the story of us bringing our broken mirrors to the God who made them and asking “Abba, father, I broke this, can you fix it?” And with love, gentleness, and discipline, God begins to recreate the things we broke. Begins to recreate us.
The Christian life is about God repairing our mirrors, so that we can once again display him to others.

And it is as simple as praying “Father, please repair.. 
please fix my greedy heart, 
please take from me my resentful spirit.”

“Father, make me more like your son.”

And this purpose of the Christian is the Christian’s greatest blessing. That God wouldn’t just scrap the project, wouldn’t just let us wander around trying to do it on our own, but would give his wise and merciful aid.
Dear Christian, be aided by Christ today. Ask him for help: for repair.

Only he, only God can show you who you are; can show you who he is.

 And so we read Christ in his book, we worship him in our life: constantly praying that we might grow more into his likeness.