beards and mirrors

For the last few years, I’ve had a beard. If I say so myself, it’s a pretty good one. Oh, not everyone thinks so. My wife has used the word “scruffy,” and certain brothers gleefully point out the amount of gray. Even so, I like it and even better, my grandkids love it. They especially like it when I grow it out for Christmas and then, sometimes, I comb it backwards so it sticks straight out. Makes their grandma crazy.

There’s one thing I don’t like about it though: after decades of a no-maintenance look, I’m now dependent on mirrors. You see, a problem with facial hair is it can get stuff stuck in it, or it can stick out funny. So periodically throughout the day, and always after meals, I go look. When I see something unsightly, I fix it.

That’s an everyday experience for most that James uses to promote understanding in James 1:22-25: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”

James explains that the law is like a mirror: it shows us what’s wrong with us. It shows us what God – and many close to us – already see. It shows our selfishness and anger and self-indulgence. It shows our lusts and perverted appetites. It shows all the things we think we’re hiding. 

And if we see all that and choose not to change, it’s just a stupid as me leaving soup in my beard. 

We have a love-hate relationship with the law. We forget that it was given to us by God, and we forget why. We forget that without it we wouldn’t know what obedience looks like. We also forget that, by the grace of God, this mirror does something else. While it shows us what’s wrong with us, it also shows us at our best. It shows us what a perfect life would look like. 

When Jesus came, he obeyed the law perfectly. Then he paid the price of disobedience not for himself, but for us. So that, when we look into that mirror and see ourselves as we are, we also know that we can become that image of our perfect selves.

This mirror called the law is a critical tool for obedient living. I should look into it at least as ofte as I check my beard.