If you remember the movie Cinderella, the evil stepmother and queen would look at the mirror and say, “Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?” The response the mirror would give was, “My Queen, you are the fairest in the land.” Through the years, the phrase morphed a bit. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” “My Queen, you are the fairest of them all.”
This queen was narcissistic, cruel, cold, and conniving. She was the hated villain in the story. This makes you wonder why anyone would have suggested that today be National Compliment Your Mirror Day. In other words, we are supposed to look at our reflection and rather than ask the question, we just inform it that we are marvelous! Obviously, we learned nothing from Cinderella!
The National Day Calendar site says, “The amount of time that you spend talking with that wonderful person you are looking at in the mirror is totally up to you. It can be just a few seconds or it can be a few minutes or more. Any time you say positive things to yourself, you subconsciously begin building self-confidence and a positive mindset. Go head! Start talking to yourself and see the difference over time.”1
The Bible is definitely not wrong when it says in Ephesians 5:28-29, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. (29) For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it…” We tend to have way more self-love than is necessary!
While I would be hesitant to encourage anyone to spend more time with a mirror, there is one mirror into which we should gaze often throughout the day. James 1:23-24 says, “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: (24) For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he as.”
The Bible is a mirror which reflects back more than just our countenance. It looks past our skin, bones, and organs and peers deeply into our soul. The reflection shown to us by the Holy Spirit is rightly assessed by the Word of God.
Spurgeon put it this way: “To every hearer, the true Word of God is as a mirror. Certain preachers dream that it is their business to paint pretty pictures, but it is not so. We are not to design and sketch, but simply to give the reflection of the Truth of God. We are to hold up the mirror to nature, in a moral and spiritual sense, and let men see themselves. We have not even to make the mirror, but only to hold it up! The thoughts of God—not our own thoughts—are to be set before our hearers’ minds—these allow a man to discover himself. The Word of the Lord is a revealer of secrets—it shows a man his life, his thoughts, his heart, his inmost self…
“The Scripture gives a truthful reflection of man’s nature: it lets the man see himself, not as others see him, for others make mistakes, nor as he would see himself, for he is very apt to be partial to his own soul; but the Scripture makes him see himself as God sees him…
“The reflection of self in the Word is very like life. You have, perhaps, seen a dog so astonished at his image in the glass that he has barked fiercely at himself. A parrot will mistake its reflection for a rival. Well may the creature wonder, since every one of its movements is so accurately copied; it thinks itself to be mocked. Under a true preacher men are often so thoroughly unearthed and laid bare that even the details of their lives are reported. Not only is the portrait drawn to the life, but it is an actually living portrait which is given in the mirror of the Word. There is little need to point with the finger, and say, “thou art the man,” for the hearer perceives 
of his own accord that he is spoken of. As the image in the glass moves, and alters its countenance, and changes its appearance, so doth the Word of the Lord set forth man in his many phases, and moods, and conditions. The Scripture of truth knows all about him, and it tells him what it knows.”2
What are we to do with what the Holy Scriptures reveals? James 1:25 tells us. “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
1https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-compliment-your-mirror-day-july-3
2https://www.preceptaustin.org/james_122-24#1:23
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images or created in Windows Copilot. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
