When my parents were here visiting over the summer holidays, they watched Snow White with the kids many times. I believe the most famous sentence in the entire movie is the question the queen would ask her magic mirror every day: “Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who Is the Fairest of Them All?”. The queen was someone obsessed by the way she looked and she wanted to be the prittiest woman alive. When she found out Snow White was more beautiful than she was, she was consumed by hate and wanted to destroy Snow White. I think we are all familiar with the story.

Sadly we live in a world where women are pressured to look beautiful and young all the time. There is always a product claiming to be better and to make you look better. And when we look in the mirror, we might not be asking the same question, but we are often concerned with the extra wrinkle that has just appeared or the white hairs that keep insisting in growing back.

I have been reading Genesis with our kids and it was so nice to read what the Bible teaches us about creation and how special we are.

^“26 Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,  in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and  subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Genesis 1:26-28

God created us in His image! He created us in His likeness! In the beginning, in God’s perfect world, before sin had entered the world, HE created man in His image! I was thinking about that and the mirror on the wall… we get so preoccupied with how we should look externally so that we can fit in with what the world dictates to us that we forget that we were made in God’s image. All the goodness, compassion, holiness, justice, perfection, the love and all the other characteristics of God are in us too. What an amazing truth! What a relief! I don’t have to look better for the world to see – I am already made perfect!

This amazing truth comes with a great responsibility, specially when we know Jesus personally and trust in Him. Do we live our lives to reflect God’s image? What do I see when I look in the mirror? Am I worried about wrinkles and hair? What do people see in me when they look at me? A fashionable hair style? The last trend in make up? Do they see a young face? Please don’t get me wrong, I think we all need to look after ourselves and look after our bodies too. Wouldn’t it be nice though that we could have people say to us that what they see in us is Jesus? They see someone different and exciting and attractive? They see someone compassionate and loving, someone that does not conform to the world? Perhaps a better question for us Christians would be something like: Mirror Mirror on the wall, can people see in me the God who loves them all?

God bless.