The Mirror Series

What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?

Whatever it is, it’s probably the same thing every day. Everybody seems to have their own morning rituals to get them going.

Maybe you have to have a cup of coffee before you can do anything.

Maybe you make your bed as soon as you get out of it, or you jump right into the shower.

Some of you may start getting yourself ready for morning the night before

I put coffee & water in my coffee maker on Friday night so that in the morning, all either me or my wife has to do is flip the switch

But some part of everybody’s morning ritual is coming face to face with the mirror.

Most of us probably get our first look at ourselves while we’re still pretty scary looking. Our eyes have that bleary, dazed look

Our hair is sticking out in strange places, Normally clean-shaven guys have some scruffy overnight growth of beards to deal with.

Facing our mirrors first thing in the morning is NOT that pleasant an experience.

Mirrors are very honest little things. They don’t compromise.

They don’t gloss over our defects and tell us we’re better-looking than we really are.

They show us every wart, wrinkle, gray hair & zit. In fact, the better the mirror, the more flaws we see.

So why do we all have mirrors in our bathrooms?

Because as unpleasant as it may be to confront our own faces first thing in the morning, --- if we don’t take a look at ourselves, and make some major adjustments, the rest of the world is going to see that morning face!

So we figure, it’s better to “face” the truth, so we can make the changes we think are necessary to make ourselves presentable to the rest of the world.

“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall!” Does anybody know where that saying comes from? (ANSWER: Snow White).

The wicked witch in that story sure liked it when the mirror told her that she was the fairest. But when it told her that she wasn’t ... then she got very angry and very jealous.

That’s the thing about GOOD mirrors, they always tell us the truth, even if we don’t like what we see!

Mirrors let us know the real self or person we are.

-------------ILLUSTRATION: The Gorilla

A man was looking for a job and he noticed that there was an opening at the local zoo. He inquired about the job and discovered that the zoo had a very unusual position that they wanted to fill.

Apparently their gorilla had died, and until they could get a new one, they needed someone to dress up in a gorilla suit and act like a gorilla for a few days.

He was to just sit, eat and sleep. His identity would be kept a secret, of course.

Thanks to a very fine gorilla suit, no one would be the wiser.

The zoo offered good pay for this job, so the man decided to do it. He tried on the suit and sure enough, he looked just like a gorilla.

They led him to the cage; he took a position at the back of the cage and pretended to sleep.

But after a while, he got tired of sitting, so he walked around a little bit, jumped up and down and tried a few gorilla noises.

The people who were watching him seemed to really like that. When he would move or jump around, they would clap and cheer and throw him peanuts. And the man loved peanuts.

So he jumped around some more and tried climbing a tree. That seemed to really get the crowd excited. They threw more peanuts.

Playing to the crowd, he grabbed a vine and swung from one side of the cage to the other. The people loved it and threw more peanuts.

Wow, this is great, he thought. He swung higher and the crowd grew bigger. He continued to swing on the vine, getting higher and higher—and then all of a sudden, the vine broke!

He swung up and out of the cage, landing in the lion’s cage that was next door. He panicked. There was a huge lion not twenty feet away, and it looked very hungry.

So the man in the gorilla suit started jumping up and down, screaming and yelling, “Help, help! Get me out of here! I’m not really a gorilla! I’m a man in a gorilla suit! Heeelllp!”

The lion quickly pounced on the man, held him down and said, “Will you SHUT UP! You’re going to get both of us fired!”

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Tonight we’re going to examine the subject of who you really are. We’re talking about “The Mirror- An Accurate Reflection of the Real You.”