While traveling to a near-distant location, the resort had one of those lighted close-up mirrors. I made the mistake of turning the lights on and looking closely at my mug.
Whoa! Don’t do that unless you have a tough mind to handle the faults that show up under close scrutiny. Faults and views you never knew existed!
I’ve always enjoyed microscopes, telescopes and magnifying glasses… Always. My first science lab involved a microscope, lab instruments with scalpels and such, and various worms, frogs and fishes stored in formaldehyde just waiting for my attention. I remember many an hour spent at my lab bench in the garage. Learning, analyzing, determining what I’m looking for, and at.
Try this: Get a drop of pond water and look closely at the miniature life and debris that exists and you’ll wonder why anyone would go swimming and spew a mouth full of water at someone!
Here’s the key about all closeups:
If you are willing to look closely
then you should never be surprised at the results.
Here’s my thought this morning.
None of us like others looking too closely at our lives! We cannot stand the scrutiny. It’s not that we have faults and wrongs, warts and zits, but you are vulnerable to their closeness and insights.
It goes both ways. As someone scrutinizes you, take the opportunity to do it in return. It’s a two-way street! There are busybodies who think it’s their role in life to point the fingers of blame at anyone who does not look like themselves, but man-o-man… That is a train wreck waiting to happen!
Looking closely at someone else is a two-way view. They are looking right back at you with the same scrutiny you give. Click To TweetA boss of my far past spent 3 hours going over my annual review with me. Later, it made me wonder how much time he spent collecting the data and documenting the report… Hmmm… I should have realized he thought he was building a case against me, but, in reality, he was showing my best features. All the while, the same event was showing his negative side.
What did I learn from this?
Those things you love to point out as faults in others (when you are doing your close-up review), are often the very same faults that are your own worst attributes.
From this experience, I learned to make sure that I’m less than critical of others than I ever was before! If I find something really bugs me about them, then it may be the worst thing others see in me!
This should mean that I’m cautious with the blaming pointed finger when I point someone else’s faults. There are generally three fingers pointing back at me, and it could mean my guilt in the same area is huge!
Analyze Your Style
From raising two kids, and being a kid myself, I realize that we want the best for our darlings. All along the way, we make huge mistakes on raising them better than we were, but hopefully, we’re doing good enough of a job for them to do it better in the future!
This is a huge thinking process! From dealing with family, friends, co-workers, and strangers! We scrutinize, criticize, compliment, and stand up for and against!
How do we keep our close-ups from wrecking relationships everywhere?
Turn to the doctors? Relationship advice columns? TV Court dramas? What does mamma say? Grandparents? Or is there some ancient advice we can find that will help all of us.
Apostle Paul
The Apostle Paul tells us that we should “…speak the truth in love… and thusly we grow up into the image of Christ who is the head of it all. (Ephesians 4:15)
Speak the truth, but do it with love.
Paul approaches this uniquely. In his typical run-on sentence fashion he brings us to this point of truth by leading us from this thought:
And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—
(Ephesians 4:11-15 NKJV)
It’s A Process!
In other words, it’s a process. It’s not something we learn overnight, or, Presto! Be Changed! Abracadabra!
Essentially, he teaches us that we are new creatures (creation) in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). From this, we learn he’s telling us that the faults we own are in the process of being recreated under a new authority. It’s not an overnight success! Ask any person who tries to change their lives, diet, habits or thinking processes! It’s a process!
We should be connected to this:
Bill Gaither produced a kid’s musical story back in the ’80s, and one of my favorite songs was called “From the Inside Out“. What we see on the outside is what others are often viewing, and critical of. But it’s what’s on the inside trying to get out that really defines who we are.
Solomon promotes it like this:
Just as water mirrors your face,
so your face mirrors your heart.
(Proverbs 27:19 MSG)
So. Before we scrutinize the outward and find it so messed up, let’s pause and look at the inward. There may just be the best of a person found inside, struggling to get outside.
Are you willing to pause, and give someone the benefit of doubt? I’m still learning this. How about you?