I Knew She Looked Familiar

I was intent on the row of warm looking shoes in the back room of the store, so nearly collided with the woman dressed head to toe in down.

"Excuse me," I said, trying to walk to the side of the elderly woman with the serious wrinkled brow.
She moved directly in my path again and I laughed at our inability to get by one another.

I glanced at her face again, and then noticed that she was wearing the exact same scarf as I was!
"What a coincidence," I started to say, with a smile for the sweet old lady who was surprisingly wearing the exact same hat that I was wearing as well.

The lady smiled back at me and I noticed she even had green, somewhat bloodshot eyes like me!

At this point, I heard Asherel laughing and then noticed that the lady in front of me had a daughter that looked exactly like Asherel and that child was also laughing. And then, but only then, did I realize I was looking into a mirrored wall.

The funny thing was that my own face had not been the tip off. It had been glancing a second time at the scarf that I recognized as my own.

"How many times more today do you think you will embarrass yourself?" asked Asherel, still giggling a half hour later. I glanced at my watch. Only 1:00.

"The day is young. Probably hundreds," I sighed.

And I knew then, had I not known it before,that God sends me messages chuckling the whole time. I remembered the verses about how one who knows God's commands but doesn't do them is like someone who looks in a mirror and then forgets what he looks like. It is a verse reminding us that knowing and doing are sometimes miles apart.

With all the wrinkles in the old face I saw reflected back at me, you would think I'd have mastered this message by now and not needed to walk right into it again.

James 1:23-25 (NIV)
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror [24] and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. [25] But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it---he will be blessed in what he does.

-nothing is impossible with God