Double Double
"Two For the Price of One" is always an attention-grabbing offer. It's hard to ignore getting seconds free, just because you wanted firsts. "Two-for-One" works well for retail, but not for reflections in a mirror.
Here in prison, I get an opportunity to look in a mirror only when I receive a shower. The shower has four slim windows so the officers can look in, for security reasons, and on the outside of one of those windows is a 6"x6" acrylic mirror.
The convenient mirror is taped there so we can see when we shave (I check my wrinkles too, but that's a whole other blog.) Trimming around mustaches, sideburns and beards is very difficult to do blind. The mirror is essential, unless it is taped on the outside of a double-paned prison security window.
The double-paned windows in prisons are nothing like residential ones in which, when well-made, one would never notice the two panes back to back. They are made so one has no distortions when looking through them. Prisons don't care much for that. Their windows are made to take abuse, and to keep inmates inside. The gap between the two glass panes is wide, and cushion of goo frames the two panes from within. The installers of prison glass are never worried if the two panes cause double reflections.
My shower location, located on my tier, the third tier, has just such a window. It doesn't matter what angle I use, I see me twice. Seeing two MEs makes it very difficult to shave, especially if I'm trying to properly line up my facial hair. The result is always askew-one sideburn is higher than the other, and my goatee is unbalanced. The look is just so un-GQ.
The Bible tells us about a double mirror that God gave to the children of Israel. The Ten Commandments were given to Israel, from God, so that they would see how impossible it was to meet God's standards of purity and righteousness. By reading the Ten Commandments, Israel would be able to gauge the distance their sin separated them from God. Yet, the Ten Commandments also showed God's love, through the access granted to Him through them. In those laws one could see the good and the bad; a double image in a single mirror.
Yeshua, however, came to fulfill the first mirror, and to give us a second. This second mirror, used regularly, will in the beginning reflect your image. But the longer you use it, you will also see a reflection of the Giver of the Mirror-Jesus, Himself the Word of God.
The Word of God is not meant to be read as just a source of catchy, one-time verses when life gets hard. The Word of God is meant to be read and studied, and our goal should always be that it is absorbed into our hearts, minds, and souls, so that eventually what you see when you look into a mirror is Yeshua Himself.
The mirror of God's Word not only shows our flaws, but it proves that what was once impossible has been made possible through the blood of Yeshua.
Are you looking into the mirror-the Word of God? Do you read it every day, praying that God will open your heart and your mind to absorb it? I hope so, for it is there you will stop seeing you and begin to see your Savior.
Adrian Torres is incarcerated at California Institution for Men. Enjoy more of his writing at https:thewallstalkstories.wordpress.com
