Have you ever been to one of those "fun houses" at an amusement park? It has been decades since I've been to one, but I can still remember laughing at myself. The mirrors made my body look like a string been or a pumpkin or a pear or something else distorted. Though it was fun, it was always a relief to look in a normal mirror and see how I really looked.
After those innocent elementary school years had passed, and adolescence arrived, I had more serious problems with mirrors. I really didn't like myself at all...especially how I looked. I was tall and extremely skinny. I had nasty looking acne sores. I was ashamed to smile after I was bashed in the mouth by a baseball bat as a kid, chipping one tooth and killing another, leaving it an incurable yellow color.
I tried everything I could to change my appearance. I laid under a sun lamp to try and improve my skin condition. I lifted weights and ate everything in sight. I shaved off the soles of my shoes and slouched a bit to try and appear shorter. I even prayed I would shrink!
It all seems pretty silly now, but at that time I was extremely insecure and didn't know the Lord.
After I came to Christ, I realized that God wasn't going to shrink me. That wasn't the solution to my problem. What I needed to do was come to realize that I was fearfully and wonderfully made by God, and that He loved me just the way I was.
But the death blow to my poor self image came when it dawned on me that God has bestowed the greatest dignity possible on this (now) bagging, sagging and dragging physical body by making it His temple!
Today's verse, 1 Corinthians 3:16 (NIV) says, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?"
How can any believer in Christ still view his or her own body with disgust knowing that God lives there...that God moved in of His own free will...and that He will never leave (see Hebrews 13:5)!
Maybe your body would never make the cover of Vogue or GQ; that's okay, Jesus' wouldn't have either (check out Isaiah 53:2). But, in Christ, you need to know that you are precious in God's eyes and the presence of God in your body beautifies it beyond human comprehension!
So the next time you look in the mirror, know that what is looking back at you is the house, the home, the temple of the living God. And God is delighted to live there.
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