Built-in Mirrors

Dress-up occasions. Did you ever attend an event where you need to look especially formal, with a nice suit or classy dress, and wonder when you arrive if everything looks right? As a preacher, this happens all the time. And then I’ll start thinking, “Is my tie straight? Did I cut myself shaving and not stop the bleeding?” I worry about that stuff because, over the decades, it has happened many times.

Earlier this week, I woke up in the night, and as I did in the total darkness, I could see eyes looking back at me. This has happened before and I don’t know if it is a reflection off the insides of my eyelids, or if my brain is just trying to accustom me to wakefulness. But, in any case, I think it would be helpful to have automatic mirrors so I could see myself, especially in those formal situations.

God also wants us to be constantly aware of ourselves; not so much our physical appearance, but what really matters: how do we look to God – our spiritual appearance. Remember, He can see to the very core of our souls (Psalm 139)!

God gives us plenty of warning about checking ourselves out.

“Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? — unless indeed you are disqualified” (2 Corinthians 13:5 NKJV). You mean we can be disqualified! Now that’s attention getting.

“For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load” (Galatians 6:3-5). We can, indeed, be fooling ourselves.

“Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it” (Hebrews 4:1). Coming just short of God’s finish line is the worst of tragedies.

You might be wondering exactly how you can examine yourself, so the above horrible results don’t happen to you. Where is this spiritual mirror we can use?

God gives us one, His message to us: the Bible. “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:22-25).

How do you look?

Jeff Greene, minister for the South Stokes Church of Christ

A Delicious Delicacy

Have you tried dry land fish? A ginseng-hunting friend of mine in Tennessee was always going on about this tasty treat. Dry land fish, otherwise known as morchella (or morels), a genus of the fungus family, are mushroom-colored and remind me of tiny pale pine trees.

I seldom eat mushrooms by themselves, but they augment burgers and steaks very nicely. Though my old buddy always raved about dry land fish, I think they tasted pretty much like most other mushrooms.

What is a delicacy, anyway? Relative to food, it’s something that tastes very good, but also has the meaning of being rare, hard to find. As I’m writing this, a bowl of mixed nuts is open at my desk. There are a few pistachios mingled among the rest of the nuts. Are they a delicacy because they taste good, but I must dig through the container to find them?

Is the Bible a delicacy? It, after all, is the message from the One and Only True and Living God. It also is declared to be figuratively delicious. “How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103 NKJV).

However, in terms of rareness, over one hundred million copies of it are sold every year. A complete copy, containing the old and new testaments can be purchased brand new for a couple of dollars. I have had a hand in giving away thousands in foreign countries and our own prisons.

We’re always told how wonderfully delicious caviar is, but when I see a picture of the dark goop made from fish eggs, I’m not so sure. Isn’t taste like beauty, in the eyes of the beholder? How many places in our little town of King can you buy a hamburger? At least ten? Why so many? It’s the old supply and demand principle. Demand means desire, desire, desire

Desire is the key in utilizing the grand gift from God of His word. It is said of those words, “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold” (Ps. 19:10). “Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97). The righteous man’s “delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:2).

If modern polls are right, people may be buying Bibles, but they’re not reading them. What gives? Is just having a Bible, your ticket into Heaven? Can we add to the excuses people will give to God when He bars them at the gate, “But Lord, I own a Bible!”?

Again, desire is the key. Immerse yourself into the pages of the awe-inspiring word that can save your soul (Romans 1:16). Delight in it completely. It’s not just the double burger; it’s the ice cream dessert, too.

Jeff Greene, minister for the South Stokes Church of Christ