Most of us don’t look in the mirror and see a masterpiece or a work of art. Especially as we grow older, the hairs on one’s head begin to migrate to parts unknown, and the battle scars of too much food and too little sleep become frighteningly evident, it becomes impossible to reconcile objectivity with the conclusion that we are a wonder to behold. We do our best, looking at ourselves from the side, sucking in our gut, combing over the patch of hair so it covers the entire scalp, but we know what we’re looking at, and it’s not Michelangelo’s David.
Conversely, there are also people who see what they want to
see, and when such individuals are asked to rate their looks, they stare up
from their mobility scooters, chins wagging and huffing as though they’d just
sprinted a marathon, and with a straight face insist that they’re a solid 10. You’d
think that if it weren’t for their swollen ankles and inability to find a swimsuit
in their size, they’d be entering beauty pageants left and right.
To a certain extent, the self-delusion is admirable. I know I
couldn’t pull it off with a straight face, and I harbor admiration for anyone
who can do something I can’t. It’s why I hold people who deal with gore, blood,
and death on a daily basis in such high regard. I know I could never be a
nurse, a doctor, or a mortician because it would disturb me to no end.
At some point, however, objectivity must have a voice, and
though grudgingly, we must admit, if only to ourselves, that given the
opportunity, we wouldn’t lay down our lives to redeem one such as the
individual staring at us from the mirror, yet Jesus did. He saw in you what you
fail to see in yourself, which is the Father’s design and creation, and deemed
you worthy of redemption, not because the flesh had some inherent value or
because in and of yourself you were more special than your neighbor, but
because He saw the work of His Father’s hand.
There is a difference between being deemed worthy of
something by another, independent of your input or agency, and being deserving
of it. Being worthy is showing some quality or ability that merits recognition
and investment so that the full potential of the individual in question might
be achieved.
Some people are born with raw talent. Whether in sports,
mathematics, or a turn of phrase, all raw talent does is reveal the potential
of an individual if they apply themselves and are diligent in pursuing the
mastering of their natural abilities.
Being deserving, on the other hand, implies that something is
owed to you, that by your own agency, you did something that merited Christ’s
sacrifice, and so you feel entitled to it. It’s called unmerited favor for a
reason. Neither you nor I were so indispensable in our unregenerate state as to
compel Christ to walk up Calvary’s hill. Christ’s compulsions were love and
obedience to the Father. He saw the potential of what we could become in Him
and knew it was the only way to facilitate the becoming.
Jesus deemed mankind worthy of His sacrifice, not deserving.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s not, given that so many today feel
they are within their rights to take it for granted, abuse it, and be
indifferent toward such a grace as this. We approach God differently when we
acknowledge that even the best of us are no more than withering husks here only
by the grace and mercy of God than when we think ourselves so great and
invaluable that Christ’s sacrifice should be his opening gambit and not His
final offer. When we do not see ourselves as we truly are- wounded and broken
and in need of healing and restoration, shackled and imprisoned in need of a
savior who can and will unfetter us from darkness and death and bring us to
life in Him- we’re always angling for something more.
Being set free from the depths of despair and renewed of mind
and heart that we might glory in our Savior is all well and good, but can you
sweeten the pot some? Perhaps a makeover, a new car, a few bucks in the bank,
and the recognition of our contemporaries? That would be a good start, don’t
you think? Men tend to view Jesus as a corporate head hunter making competing
offers, hoping they switch sides, and not as who He is, the Lord of glory and
the only one with the power and authority to set them free.
My wife is beautiful. By any objective standard, she is
gorgeous, and I know I lucked out when she said she would marry me. Even so,
once in a while, I catch her looking at herself in the mirror with a look that
tells me she is seeing something that displeases her. Even though she’s nearing
fifty, she is supremely beautiful to me, whether upon waking first thing in the
morning, replete with bedhead and bleary eyes, or during one of the rare days
when she doesn’t have to go in to work and is wearing her favorite pair of
pajamas all day, with her hair up in a bun. She is the love of my life and ever
will be thus.
Does she look exactly as she did when I first saw her almost
thirty years ago? Obviously not. We’ve had two daughters together and
twenty-five years of marriage, with the ups and downs of life and a handful of
curve balls thrown in for good measure. The prism through which I see her,
however, is as that ever-young, ever-youthful seventeen-year-old I saw sitting
on a park bench one random day in the summer of 1997.
God sees us through the prism of His Son, and it is ever thus
once we deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow after Him. We are born
again to new life, and though we might see gray hair and wrinkles and fleshy
bits that weren’t there a few years ago, what God sees is Jesus.
Job wasn’t holding a mirror up to himself, contemplating his
appearance, and concluding that he was a masterpiece or the pinnacle of God’s
creation in his state. He understood that beyond his present appearance, beyond
what eyes of flesh could see, God had fashioned him, molded him like clay,
clothed him with skin and flesh, knit him together with bones and sinews, and breathed
life into him.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
Posted on 1 March 2025 | 12:18 pm
Page processed in 0.022 seconds.