A Reflection

 

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

—Psalm 27:4

I have a premise that I would like to share with you:

That which we gaze upon becomes what we reflect to others.

I don’t think I am off base when I compare this premise with Scripture. In Psalm 8, we read that God’s glory has been set above the heavens and that He has crowned us humans with glory and honor. He shows forth His inherent glory and He gives us derived glory.

The sun and moon illustrate this idea. The moon’s light is derived from the more powerful light of the sun. When we look at the moon, the light that we see is simply a reflection of the light given off by the sun. Like the moon, we should also act as mirrors that reflect God’s light.

In the Exodus 34:29, we read about Moses, as he came down from Mount Sinai:

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.

To allow the Israelites to speak with Moses, he put a veil over his face so the reflected light of God’s divine presence would not blind the people.

The Apostle Paul uses this story in writing about us as ministers of the Holy Spirit. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul summarizes his argument with these words:

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

So, as I began, I now repeat my premise:

That which we gaze upon becomes what we reflect to others.

The question that naturally springs to our minds: “How do we do that?”

When we look at God’s written Word, we should pause and consider what we see in the passage we are studying and what we see of God in that passage. We need to look for His face. We need to seek the characteristics that define Him. We need to apprehend what He has revealed to us about Himself.

Once we do this, it becomes easy to worship and spend a longer period of time gazing at Him and His greatness. Then, we have no choice but to trust that God’s Holy Spirit will reflect in our faces the Light of Christ.

Let us seek God’s beauty until we find it. Then, let’s determine to reflect His beauty to others.