“Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion- it is a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ.”
— Billy Graham

He woke up that morning, sweating. The covers that had felt so, so comfortable last night when he crawled into bed were now smothering him. The clock by his bed read 5:22am. Really. The thought crossed his mind to try to go back to sleep. To sling off a layer of covers and try to get comfortable again. Or he could get up and begin the day. What to do. The clock now read 5:31am. Already? The day might be over by the time he made a decision, so he thought he might as well get up now.

Through the darkened house he moved, quietly. A creature of habit who knew where things were. The things that went bump in the night. The things that jumped in front of toes or smacked into his face. Knowing came the hard way. Soon he found the familiar switch in the same place as it used to be and the bathroom light came on. With half closed eyes he looked into the mirror. Eyes that soon widened in response to the vision before him. Could it be? He scurried back to the nightstand beside his bed, fumbling in the darkness for his glasses. On the way back he smacked into the corner of the closet with his bare foot, but it could not slow him down. Again he stood in front of the mirror, this time eyes wide open and seeing himself for the first time that morning. Really seeing himself. He studied what he saw, critically going over every feature. However, he concluded that nothing looked different after all. For a moment he thought, through the cloudy vision, that he’d seen a change. Now all he saw was disappointment. So, this is how the day starts, he asked himself. Like this.

I wrote that just now, processing in my head what it might look like for me to wake up one morning and find myself more like Christ. Interesting thing, though. As I processed that I could not, when I reached the point as a writer where I had to choose what it would look like visually to be more Christ-like, I could not. Being more Christ-like is a change that happens inside of me. Inside of you. And it will manifest itself not in a reflection in the mirror (or so I think), but in how we interact with those around us. The mirror is the wrong place to look.

1 Timothy 5:24-25 – “The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. 25In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden.”
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