Week of 12/30-1/5: Foundations - God Gives the Rules

Day Two: Leviticus 19:1-2 The LORD spoke to Moses: “Speak to the entire Israelite community and tell them: Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 “Listen, Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

“YOU CAN NEVER see your own face, only a reflection, not the face itself.”

Think about these words by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar from the Middle Ages. Have you ever considered that the only person’s face it is impossible for you to ever see is your own? Spend a few minutes right now and see how much of your face you can see. Maybe some of your nose, and if you make a fish face you can kind of see your lips. Other than that, you can’t see anything else. With that being the case, how can we ever be sure of how we really look?

We can be confident in how we look because we can see our reflections. That is precisely what we see every time we look into a mirror. We are not looking directly at our face, but at a reflection of our face.

Does seeing our reflection instead of seeing our actual face change anything? Absolutely not! Just because we can’t see our actual face with our own two eyes doesn’t mean we don’t know what we look like. We can trust the reflection to give us an accurate depiction of ourselves.

Think about this in the context of God’s holiness. Can we physically see the actual holiness of God? No, but that’s not to say that we can’t get an accurate understanding of it through His Word. Just as a mirror gives us an accurate reflection of our face, the Word of God gives us an accurate reflection of God’s holiness. As you continue through life studying the Scriptures, remember that they reflect all the characteristics of God. We may not see physical manifestations of them, but we can see their accurate reflections throughout all of the Bible.

PAUSE AND REFLECT

▷▷What’s the difference between seeing something and seeing a reflection of something?

▷▷Why can we accept the trustworthiness of reflections?

▷▷How does the Bible reflect various characteristics of God?