Mirror, Mirror, What do you see?

Can you guess who this is?
ROB
Yes, there was a time when I had hair! Don’t I look cute with my little milk and turtleneck sweater? So, why am I showing you this and exposing myself to potentially great waves of ridicule? Well it all has to do with an experience I had this week during the early morning. I was in front of a mirror and for some reason I just studied my appearance. As I stared at myself I took note of some of the small wrinkles under my eyes, the gray and white in my mustache, beard, and hair (the little I have left), and how in ways that were subtle but noticeable, my face reflected the five decades that have passed. I remember looking in the mirror and uttering these words, “Lord, you are getting me ready”. Now please hear me, I am not some morbid individual who walks around thinking, “I’m almost dead, I’m almost dead!” But I also am not someone who is oblivious to the reality that it is very likely that I have lived more years than I have left. So, what was I saying to the Lord when I told Him he was getting me ready? I was just saying to my creator, “I get it Lord. I’m not deceiving myself that my years are passing and in what may seem like the blink if any eye I will be with you. When I stare at that picture of my boyhood I almost laugh because I can remember being that guy. I can kind of remember what it felt like to be me at that point in my life. It does not seem like forty-plus years have passed. But I almost laugh because I think for me, just like many others, I somehow have been thinking that time is not really passing and drawing me closer to when I will leave this world. Then I look in the mirror and bam! No escaping that truth!
Well, brothers and sisters, if you can relate at all to what I am saying (and if you can’t, give it time) I want to encourage you with some words from the bible:

“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. “ Philippians 3:20-21

You see, that image in the mirror that prompted me to write this e-mail is telling me something. It is telling me that God Is getting me ready to assume my true citizenship and to be with my Lord and Savior. It is also reminding me that even though my body is “outwardly wasting away”

(2 Corinthians 4:16), Jesus, who has control over all things, has control over my body and what my appearance will be like when I am with Him. For Him it is nothing to take this body that is breaking down and lowly and transform it into a body that will be like His glorious body…and to keep it that way for all eternity (Can it be that you will see me with hair again?).

Beloved, they say that time stops for no one. Amen? Amen. But we don’t need to cower when we see ourselves in our turtlenecks, with our little milks from years gone by. God has told us that this would happen and He is fulfilling His word. He will also fulfill His word and take you to be with Him and show you that there is nothing that He can’t transform, including the body He gave you in the first place.

So, tomorrow when you see me, I will look just like you expect me to. But thirty or forty years from now, if you are with me in heaven, don’t look for the guy with the turtleneck and milk! I think God has something much better than that in store for us.

For His glory,

Rob

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