Look Into Your Window

Have you ever thought about what you look like to other people? I remember learning that we will never actually see ourselves, only reflections and in pictures, and the craziest thing is that we have an idea of what we look like in our heads, so different to reality, that if we were to walk past ourselves in the street we wouldn't notice. HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!

This idea of how I look, has been something God has been putting on my heart, how I look to others, myself and to Him. I have talked about it on here a little bit, but I do have confidence issues sometimes. Sometimes I focus on how others are going to perceive my physical appearance, or spend too much thought and energy tearing down what I see in the mirror. THE MIRROR. let me tell you something, how many times do we look in the mirror a day and how many times are our first thoughts negative about what we see! the mirror is such a WEIRD invention. God put a question on me the other night and said, if you had no way of seeing your physical appearance what would you focus on? IF you couldn't rely on your hair being just right, or your clothes matching, when you go out to meet friends, what would your thoughts be, where would your focus be? You see I think if we were to remove mirrors from our lives, we would start focusing a lot more on who we are and what gifts we have than what looks good. There is that quote "if the whole world was blind, who would you impress". Living in this century of social media, and being able to be recorded and put on Instagram or snapchat or any platform, has made us obsessed with our appearances because we think that is how people, who have never met us are going to judge our worth. But then it comes back to, people don't judge our worth, people don't give us validation, We don;t even give ourselves our worth, because God already did. Jesus dies for us, and gave us eternal life, THAT is why we are worthy, God's forgiveness and grace and purpose are the reasons we are worthy, not because we have the latest pair of nikes.

This took me a long long time to start to put into practice, because I am a human person who wants to be liked, just being honest, but what I learned is I would rather have God's light in me, than be liked by peers who only see my physical appearance. I want to be seen for more than the surface, for people to look through me, not at me. I want to be known last for my looks and first for my actions and the way I treat others, the way I make someone feel loved, the way I give. I am working on this every single day, and it has been a journey to get to this point, but I see it like this.

Think of looking into a mirror; all we see is ourselves, we can't see past our physical appearance and what is right in front of us. That is how we first see ourselves and how we first see others. The surface, and we pre judge because we don't look past it. We judge for perfection, we get angry at flaws and praise what we think is acceptable.

Now think of looking into a window: we faintly see our physical appearance, but we also see past that, we see they beauty God created, the sunset, or birds, or the mountain side, the muddy hill, we see past the physical and into more, That is how God sees us. He gave us a physical body that is unique and beautiful on its own but it is not where God stops, He sees past that and into our gifts, our hearts, our fails and our successes, He sees our real struggles and our real leaps of faith. He sees our flaws as strengths, He doesn't want us to get angry or wish we didn't have them, He wants us to use them to connect with others. He sees us completely.

That's how I want to start seeing myself and others.

So, look into your window, what do you see?