12 August 2024

Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor, wrote a brilliant essay entitled, ‘The Mirror Maker’. In it, the craftsman makes a little mirror which is attached to his forehead. The person who looks into this mirror sees himself as the other person sees him.

As you can imagine, it has mixed fortunes. Old friendships are confirmed but friendships based on habit and convention are quickly dissolved. Who has the courage to wear such a mirror upon their heads? Would you? It isn’t a best-seller.

It was Robert Burns who summed up this mirror image when he wrote about personal conceit as displayed in a kirk no less. ‘O wad some  Pow’r the giftie gie us,’ he says, ‘to see oursels as others see us!’  It is a scary prospect and not readily embraced.

The Bible encourages us not to see ourselves as others see us but to see ourselves as God sees us. That’s difficult. ‘Now we see through a glass darkly.’ says St. Paul about the old tin mirrors which had been manufactured in the city of Corinth.

What we see of  God is limited, partial, indistinct. But what he sees of us is as clear as a bell. And so, in order to live today, we look through that glass darkly to see the One who not only knows what we are really like but loves what he sees and loves what he sees eternally.

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