If you are not too old you remember the fairytale story of Snow White depicting good and evil. The evil part is played by, you guessed it, a prominent queen, much like Queen Athaliah of OT fame; obsessed with beauty and power. To be sure she was always the most beautiful she would stand before the magical mirror each day and ask: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” and would hear “Thou, O Queen art the fairest of them all,’—that is—-until the day it responded: “Snow White is the fairest of them all.” Immediately her false façade was shattered and her pride was revealed. The reader sees the real queen, beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside. Both the fictional queen and the real queen Athaliah were intent upon proving the mirror wrong, Both set out to destroy their rivals.
Sometimes we are like the queen. When God’s mirror, His Word, reveals our true person, we seek to cover our warts, scars. and imperfections because we don’t like what God’s Word reveals. We do not want to admit our imperfections and we seek to cover them through works without faith much like the Laodicean church. But, the fact remains, we still have imperfections, called sin, because God’s mirror does not lie. He still sees us as we truly are.
On the one hand we say, yes I am a believer but we live as if we are not. But if we want the mirror to say we are ‘perfect, wanting nothing,’ then we must submit to God and stop saying we haven’t sinned. To say we have no sin is essentially saying God is a liar for He hath said: “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Could that be a reason God does not answer our prayers? Could it be that our motives and our inner person are like the queen’s? We want to hear we are the fairest of them all but fail to admit our shortcomings and change our ways.
God’s mirror answers who is the fairest of them all. It is the ABC’s: One who admits their sin, believes that God’s plan for sin redemption is through His son and confesses their sin seeking forgiveness and cleansing from God.
The question remains: Are you like the queen or Snow White? What is God’s mirror revealing about you?