I own an ugly mirror. How I came to own it was rather unexpected. I had been shopping at the pharmacy we use, and as usual I checked their Clearance section for anything that might be useful to us. And there was the mirror!
It's a pedestal vanity mirror. The type that swivels from a regular reflection, to a magnified reflection, and will also light up around the perimeter to give better viewing. I don't wear a lot of make-up, but I do wear some, and this seemed like it would be helpful for that.
Given that the markdown price was 1/10th of the original price - sold me. $4.99 is a great bargain, I thought.
And as I was standing there, in front of all the marked down stuff, holding the box of my new find, another customer was walking past and remarked 'Oh! I have that! We call it the Ugly-mirror!'.
Um. What?
I didn't think it was ugly, it has a bronze finish and wasn't too ornate nor too plain. So, I remarked as such, and she continued with ... 'Oh, it's not ugly. But you're gonna see ugly in it.'. - Um. Not making this better, lady. Thanks a lot, I was thinking!
With a wave of her hand, and a smile on her face, she said her goodbye's with a 'you'll see'.
Oooh-kay, then. (*Insert eye roll here*)
I bought the mirror, brought it home, set it on the bathroom shelf, and plugged it it. Pretty! Not ugly at all. (Dumb lady, mumbled in my head)
I looked at my reflection on the regular side. Yup! This will work nicely when putting make-up on, or tending to a blemish or such. And then I flipped it over to the magnifying side, which for all intents and purposes will forever be referred to as - the UGLY side!!!
That lady was NOT kidding! The magnified, lit up reflection made every pore, stray chin hair, wrinkle, misplaced make-up, magnified and UGLY! Yikes!!! I look like THAT?!?! 'Horrors!' I had no idea!
Well, I quickly washed, plucked, and adjusted every little spot that was magnified and screaming at me to rescue me from myself!!!
My hair roots were more gray than I realized, my subtle smile lines were now bonified age wrinkles, and my lips resembled the 'before' shot on chap-stick commercials! I looked my age, and suddenly the humble girl I thought I was - had instantly become very vain and self conscious. Yikes!
Mirrors don't lie. No sir, they do not. Not good UGLY mirrors, that is. They expose every tiny detail of what's real. Whether we like it, or not.
...God is like that. Make no mistake, nothing about HIM is ugly. But he does expose what is ugly in us, thru his word, the bible.
Whether you're quite familiar of what's written in it, or you know it simply as a bible - and really have no clue what it says, it still speaks truth. And nothing is hidden to God. Nothing about this world. Nothing about us individually.
We can read how there's awful societal scars that we deal with in our culture; or personal blemishes we walk around with personally but ignoring them. They're there.
You're probably thinking of a whole bunch of things wrong in our world! I do!
But we also need to be mindful of the personal heart blemishes, we each have, that we hide from Gods mirror. Guess what. It's not hidden. They're not hidden.
You know what I'm talking about. Those little (or maybe not so little) dark sides inside of you. The ones you wish you didn't struggle with.
So why do you? Why do I? Let's get that Ugly Heart mirror out each day, and ask God to show us what shows to Him. What do we need to wash thru Him, and get it cleaned up. He'll show you. He's kinda keen on us - and likes us at our best. It 'reflects' well on Him.
