Mirror-wise

I've noticed a number of pictures appearing recently on social media that have been published back-to-front.  I don't realise it at first, until there's a street that I recognise, or suddenly I see some writing on a badge or shop sign.  I often use a familiar phrase from a long ago foreign language lesson to express surprise, especially when I'm alone, and I mutter to myself, 'Hoe kan het zijn?' (how can it be?)  Suddenly I get it, the whole image is reversed, as if it's been taken using a mirror.

Perhaps a more important question is not how, but why should it be so?  It's reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's words in The Importance of Being Earnest: "To lose one parent ... may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." For one picture, by some means, to have been inserted reversed could be an accident but when it occurs two or three times, from a number of sources, I begin to think something more coordinated is afoot.

I confess, I don't know the answer.  But I know that a sign or badge is back to front because I know what the letters should look like; I recognise that a street is portrayed back to front because I've seen the actual street, and remember the sequence of its buildings.  St James, in his letter, wrote about a man looking in a mirror and then going away and promptly forgetting what he looks like (James 1:22-25).  James used this as an illustration for looking at the perfect law (i.e. reading God's Word) but not doing what it tells us to do.

The modern equivalent would be someone who considers it sufficient simply to hear a good sermon on a Sunday morning; by the time the roast dinner is before him, he has completely forgotten what had been said as if he'd never been there at all.  It's so much easier, isn't it, to continue doing what we've always done?  Either we don't realise what we need to change in our lives, or we postpone indefinitely any change in our habits that would put into effect what we've heard.

Someone I was chatting to in the last few days said, "I'm not ready to commit ... because there are things I'm doing - things I like doing - that I know I'd have to give up ... and I'm not ready to give them up."  Knowing a time in my own life when I said more or less the same thing, I understood where my friend was coming from but, knowing also where that decision had led me, I couldn't be generous enough to tell him, "That's fine, take your time."  Instead I prayed that he would be led to a point where the attraction of those things would pale, and that he would then find himself ready to commit to those things that are eternal.

James concludes this chapter by advocating that his readers should "keep [themselves] from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27).  Sometimes I realise that something I've just done was 'unworthy' of my calling and, either in my mind or in reality, I consider how I must appear in that mirror.  I then have no option but to regret what I've done and beg forgiveness.  My prayer for my friend is that he may one day be able to do the same.