The Mirror of the Man

Proverbs 27:19

"As in water face reflects face,
So a man's heart reveals the
man."

I've had one of those days where I cannot keep my attention span on much for too long. But I started 'flicking' (reading is to strong a word), through the book of Proverbs. This book is quite disjointed and goes from one thing to the next with little pattern or flow so concentration doesn't really need to be fully functional, and often it seems similar to flicking through a few blogs. But I came across the above verse which has been able to grasp my mind slightly more than anything else today so I thought I'd put finger to keyboard and try to get some thoughts!

The first thing to mind is that the heart gives a truer reflection of who we are, actions and words can often be little more than a spoof, whether we're saying things or doing them out of duty, building up a persona, perhaps we've been influenced to think we have to act a certain way, or simply because we don't want people to know exactly what we're like we can often give a false impression of what is actually in our hearts. So the Heart is that which gives clearer insight to the actual person than anything else!

Another aspect that comes to mind is that one's reflection in water is not crystal clear as in a mirror but has ripples etc going through it, (To check this I've just filled the sink in the work bogs, but whether its the lighting in there or what, I couldn't see my reflection at all, so that isn't that great an experiment). However my memory tells me that having seen my reflection in lakes and puddles etc that it is not perfect.

So my next thought is that when we look at our hearts in order to get a picture of who we are, it is not 100% clear. Yes it is the best place to look for a more accurate revelation of who we are, but the verse that springs to mind here is that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it (Jer 17:9). So although we do need to look inwardly, to the heart of who we are, it may lie to us about certain things. A friend told me last week that the most lies he's ever heard have come from his own heart, and I guess that's true for me also!

Another verse that springs to mind is that "man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." This is similar to the verse that follows Jer 17:9 (above). Jer 17:10 says "I the Lord search the heart and try the reigns..."
I guess that even though we can and ought to look not just at the appearance of people or the outward but at the heart, and that though this is the best mirror of who we are, and that the reading it gives us is not perfect; God can see "the heart" of our heart! (MY mind has gone), It does not lie to Him, He sees exactly who and what we are without distortion or ripples!