Your reflection is what you see in the mirror.
Hello family. Happy Friday. I hope and pray that your week has been beautiful. I hope you’re okay? Happy? Peaceful? Still holding up the faith? Here 🩷
There’s a quote by Socrates that says, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” When we live without a single awareness of our surroundings and lives , we’re most likely to abuse or be abused; we’re likely to go around in circles, finding ourselves at the same stop sign many times – this can be FRUSTRATING !
We live in an incredibly fast-paced world. Our mobile phones are constantly buzzing, distracting social media apps pinging with notifications of likes, reposts, comments, new content on the feed, Netflix always has something new to binge on, I loveeee me a good Korean series. There’s always something else to do that can be done later or shouldn’t be done but we choose to focus on the distraction first and find that we have little or no time to focus on the serious things. You can open your laptop to work in the next two mins you’re on TikTok laughing at videos that you can save and watch later.
Today l want us to go into behavioural reflection, particularly, speech/words. Did l say the right thing? Would Jesus say it? Did l have to say that at that time? We need to get used to the process of diving deep into our thoughts and actions and determining the great, “Why?” behind them. Think about the conversations you’ve had this week, you obviously won’t remember all of them but there’s a couple I know for sure you remember. Was it gossip? A lie? A rude remark? Or dishing out information you shouldn’t YET? Or maybe just talking to someone you had made a decision to not talk to again? The question is WHY?
Self Reflection helps us to understand what took place, why something took place, what the impact was, whether it should happen again. There are people who may have started the conversation with you, you may not be the one who initiated the talk. You are however , responsible for your engagement. Your response is completely your intended Input because you could’ve chosen to not respond. You could choose to respond in another way. I didn’t respond so well to my mother last week and it started ringing in my mind. I went over the conversation in my head and reflected. When I realised I could’ve done better, I apologised. From then I made sure I try by all means, to not respond emotionally. What I’m saying is, we can all do better if we want to. If we choose to.
Practicing self-reflection takes discipline and intentionality. The bible says Jesus is both the mirror we are to look at and the reflection we are to see. You evaluate your words by The Word (Jesus) and you work on your words to resemble Jesus (The Word) . He is called the word and if He is in us, should we not be speaking The Word? Take sometime on this today. Is my tongue that of an evangelist? I hope you know, this has nothing to do with title. Do you know what Isaiah said?
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Unclean lips are not a “new” thing but they are not a “cool” thing. When Isaiah encountered the Lord , he had a moment of self reflection. God’s Holiness must’ve highlighted the stains of Isaiah’s garment. The presence of God questions the presence of uncleanliness in us, be it words or actions. Nowadays people may not necessarily be verbal, they can text their unclean words. You don’t have to argue. You don’t have to be rude. You don’t have to lie. Infact, you shouldn’t. Part of self reflection is, repentance and forgiveness.
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.””
Isaiah 6:5-7 NIV
May the Lord help us. 🤎