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Message from Pastor Marty

Mirror Image

By Pastor Peter W. Marty

There is a big old yellow house on the corner of Grand and Locust Streets. It’s close enough to the intersection to make it obvious that builders erected it long before Locust ever became a four-lane highway. The dryer exhaust vent pokes out the east foundation wall. I never noticed this four-inch piece of PVC pipe until last Friday. That’s when I stopped at the red light and spotted a young kid standing in front of the vent.

He was all of seventh or eighth grade, clearly on his way to school. There he was warming his hands on a wintry morning. Or so I thought. The red light lasted long enough that I got to eye this middle-schooler for more than a few seconds. He wasn’t just warming his hands; he was cupping them in the vapor, collecting just enough moisture on his fingers to be able to groom his hair. The storm window above the pipe served as his mirror. He tilted his head this way and that, capturing photogenic poses of morning hair that wouldn’t behave. I was eavesdropping on a private moment in front of a mirror.

The sight reminded me of Norman Rockwell’s, The Girl at the Mirror. In that painting, a girl on the brink of adolescence, maybe 11 years old, sits on a footstool in front of a large mirror propped against a chair. Her chin is in her hands. She is wearing a petticoat. A child’s doll has been flung carelessly to the floor. In her lap, perhaps replacing the doll that had just been there, is a magazine open to the photograph of a glamorous movie star. A comb, brush, and open tube of lipstick rest at the girl’s feet. Her little-girl braids are pinned up in back — a gesture of longing for a more sophisticated look. Her expression seems to be a forlorn sigh, the critical survey of an image in the mirror that doesn’t yet measure up to desire.

It could be that this girl at the mirror is on her way to school hoping to look “just right” for the boy at the storm window. Or perhaps the boy at the storm window wonders if this will be the day when he’ll get the gumption to say “hi” to the budding movie star with little-girl braids pinned up in the back.

“When will tomorrow come? When, oh when, will tomorrow come?” This is the private prayer of many adolescents. But teens and pre-teens aren’t the only ones who wonder when tomorrow will come. All of us have the capacity to wait longingly for something to materialize in our lives that isn’t coming at all in the manner we had hoped. Sometimes insecurity seizes our confidence in these moments. Nervousness can creep in. Disappointment has its own impressive shadow.

I’m coming to the conclusion that the wisest thing we could do in such a time of longing is not to look in the mirror. In fact, put the mirror away. Turn away from your mug shot in the storm window and look into the eyes of people all around you. Their faces will reveal more about who you need to be in this world than any primping or shopping will ever disclose.

So this month, take special delight in the facial expressions of all kinds of people. Notice more than you may normally be inclined to notice. Unbury your head from the hymnal. Look up from your To-Do List on the kitchen counter. Greet the eyes of the Salvation Army bell-ringer. Wherever you go, be on the lookout for Jesus Christ, who promises to be hidden in the faces of people just like you … people longing for a life that doesn’t always measure up to desire … people praying the same prayer I’ll bet you’ve prayed many times before: “When, oh when, will tomorrow come?”

Pastor Peter Marty,

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