Is the Mirror Broken, Or Am I? – September 2016
Excerpt From The Financial Shepherd
Why Dollars + Change = Sense by Glen Wright and Sy Pugh
If you’ve ever been in a Fun House at a carnival or a fair, then you know how different you can look depending upon the mirror that you’re looking in. There are mirrors that can make you look 10 feet tall, or five feet wide. There are mirrors that contort your shape and proportions to the extent that you can hardly recognize your own reflection. On first glance, you know it’s you because you’re standing there and can recognize the clothes or shoes you have on, but everything else is so different, it is difficult to tell what’s real. In the Fun House, how you look in the mirror is not necessarily how you look in real life. The good news about these mirrors is that they are for entertainment purposes only – just for fun. The bad news is that some of us need to take a second look – because the distorted images we see reflected aren’t that far from the truth.
Are you broken, or is the mirror you’re holding broken? There’s a childhood superstition about broken mirrors that says whoever breaks a mirror will have seven years of bad luck. The problem with superstition is that is requires an individual to rely on luck and circumstances instead of trusting in God and His word. Regardless of whether you broke the mirror, or just looked into a cracked mirror and saw a broken reflection, the real question is what are you going to do about what you see looking back at you? In life, the broken mirror is mostly about the tools and habits that are used to help build or destroy our lives (i.e., poor financial planning, excessive spending habits, etc.). But a broken or cracked mirror also can represent an opportunity to start anew; to gain a fresh start and launch a new attempt to do things differently. Owning up to our flaws and broken way of thinking opens the door for improvement and gives us a chance to let God make us into who He created us to be – instead of what the world sees and expects us to be.
