Some days, like today, I really wish I were a morning person…. I would love to wake up and be on top of my game…. cooking a nice healthy breakfast for the family rather than warming a breakfast cookie (yes, that is a real breakfast product) in the microwave and rushing to get in the car…. or getting up prior to the rest of the family and having some quiet time with God rather than dropping my daughter off at school then going to the office early and taking that time then. No wait, that one works out really well… Okay, how about this one… I would love to be able to get up and clean my house spotless before everyone woke up. (Ha! That one will never happen!) or even just get up without having to rush to get ready in the morning.
Regardless of what I would like to be, I am a perpetual night owl and think sunrises may be beautiful but I’d rather wait and see the movie of one than see it first hand. So, after many different strategies, I came up with a great plan… Because I’m sluggish in the morning and have trouble getting ready quickly, I would have a dual getting ready system. At my office, I would have a duplicate of my hair styling things and an extra makeup bag in case I couldn’t get ready in time at home. It was a great plan but was lacking in one thing, a mirror. I decided to get a mirror that I could prop on my desk and after a great search, purchased one from the Dollar Tree.
I was thankful for that mirror because after some time, I began to get frustrated with my hair straightener when I noticed, by looking in that mirror, that it wasn’t straightening like it should. Two straighteners later, I began to question my solution. That’s when I looked closely at my helpful little mirror…. On the right side of it I noticed a slight wave in the glass… it just so happened to be in that same spot that I could never straighten… It wasn’t the straightener nor my hair… It was a tiny little carnival mirror that showed my hair as something it wasn’t… The good news: It wasn’t bumpy hair… it was straight hair all along. The bad news: I wasted a lot of time trying to correct it when everyone else could see that it was straight already.
I was thinking this morning about grace…. God extending a hand to me to help me when I really don’t deserve it…. not just extending a hand but stooping down like a father to a child and picking me up and loving me when I don’t deserve it…For me it has always been a hard to thing to not only comprehend but to accept.
Sometimes or maybe even most of the time, it is difficult to allow and accept the gift of God’s grace for yourself. When you look in the mirror you see the old self… the one with the bumpy hair… the exact one that evil wants you to focus on… the one that the enemy seeks to remind you to look at… the one that you deem so imperfect that it is not worthy of such a gift. But God’s grace sees the mirror and knows it is warped/bumpy/wavy and is causing the illusion and He knows it is not who you really are… He sees you as the perfection he created you to be… He sees what is real and not tainted.
I don’t know what is going on in your life today or how you see yourself when you look in the mirror… maybe you see the past crime, the addiction you are still battling with, the string of terrible decisions, the lack of trust, the lack of faith, the broken heart, the anger…. all things that you’ve given to God but you still see them when you look at yourself… But God wants us to see the person in the mirror that He sees.. the one who has no bumpy hair! God wants us to be on the the top of our game…to recognize the bump in the mirror, to be focused on Him and not our funky mirror illusions, to show His grace to not only others but experience it for ourselves…. all because he want us to be alert and cautious and not fall into the enemy’s trap. 
Satan, like a lion, preys on the weak, sick or young… He will prey on those that are focusing on the warped mirror and trying to get the “hair straightened” instead of walking away from it. The enemy wants us to be defeated and will use the mirror as a weapon to frustrate, discourage and distract so he can attack.
I know this…. I’ve looked in the bumpy mirror all too often myself. Time to get a new one. 🙂
1 Peter 5:8
8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
The Prodygal Life 