Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back. (Mason Cooley)
They say those living in a glass house should be careful about throwing stones. If you can cast a stone with a look, my face has been dark with those looks. I can't keep my soul off my face these days.
He who has regrets cannot look at himself in the mirror. (Eric Cantona)
Paul says he saw as though in a dim mirror, waiting for heaven when his sight would be clear. Life is deceptively transparent at times, as though you could look into the future and see your fate. Yet these predictions are only that. Whether you believe life will forever cause pain or yield moments of joy, you may be right and you may be wrong. Only by walking forward will you know the truth.
The truth is, we walk into our futures armed only with hindsight. Like walking in a fog, we can only know our history and our present moment. I am working on the courage to continue walking when my history and my present drip with pain, trying to produce hope within myself that tomorrow could be different.
I cling tight to Paul's words, willing them to be true of me. Trying to force these trials into the box of "light and momentary troubles". I lift the burden from my back with muscles straining, trying to cast it onto the Lord's shoulders instead. It feels too heavy to transfer. I am pinned under it's bulk, ground into the soil by it's weight. As I lie there, finally stilling, ceasing to struggle, I inhale the dust and am comforted by those stories of the prophets, the saints who have called out to the Lord with the same desperation and hopelessness. Because, from our prostrate position, even His rescue seems unlikely.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
