Mirrors

Mirrors
One of my friends defined loving yourself as looking in the mirror and saying “I love myself for everything I am.” I wonder, is that true? I think it is, but it goes deeper than that. Truly loving yourself means seeing your reflection and finding, not yourself, but all that God has done for you. You are staring at an image of God, a little piece of himself that he chose to put on earth. Does that mean you are perfect? Of course not. But really, if God chooses to die for your sin, who are you to bring it up again? your ugliness and shame cannot be more powerful than God, and if you love yourself then you will see yourself as God sees you.
     Writing on my Hand

Dear friend,
I had a professor assign a reading out of the book "Eve's Revenge" by Lilian Calles Barger. It looks at women and the spirituality of the body. You should read it. I just walked through the snow flurries to the library and back and the whole book now sits on my desk waiting for me to curl up in the overheated orb of our room. In the first chapter it looks at the culture around us and the brutal separation of body and mind and what it has done to our view of our bodies. We so often end up believing that our bodies are a separate part of us, devoid of the value of our soul. She points to Christ. He came in a physical body. He was perfect. His body was physical. Both were divine. We will be raised with our physical bodies. The LORD created our bodies as they are with all their crazy eccentricities and differing shapes and forms. One thing my professor brought up as well is that Christ's perfect body when He was raised from the dead still had the marks of the cross.

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:24-27 ESV).

I can't put my finger on the exact implications of that. However, the whiffs of understanding that go past me are staggering and wonderful.  A perfect savior...scars as a sign of honor, not flaws...