Jeff Adams

This post is Dan’s fault! You might want to check out his fascinating brief history of mirrors in response to my last post Mirror Image. He also offers some interesting thoughts as one who works in the amazing world of fiber optics.

Dan, in your references to some fabled mirror references, you left out a big one ”Through the Looking Glass – and What Alice Found There” by Lewis Carroll. Most kids in our culture grew up with some type of exposure to “Alice in Wonderland”. Through the Looking Glass is the mirror image, set exactly six months later, inside rather than outside. The work is filled with references to mirrors, direct and indirect.

This morning I was reading from both Psalm 48 and Hebrews 9. Psalm 48 is a bombastic celebration of the greatness of Zion, the city of our God, the mountain of his holiness. Reading through this short psalm it becomes apparent that the psalmist’s burst of praise transcends the literal city of Jerusalem and points to a higher reality. This is the reality that Paul saw in Galatians 4:26, that John saw in Revelation 21:2 and that is also mentioned in Hebrews 12:22 — the earthly city of Jerusalem is a figure of the heavenly reality, the very abode of God.

Hebrews 9 follows a similar theme, but focuses on the temple. The point of the chapter is how meticulously the high priest of Israel presented the blood of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement for the sin of the nation of Israel. The writer of Hebrews then points out how much more special that Jesus, our great High Priest, presented his own blood once and for all in the heavenly temple not made with hands. Several times in Hebrews 8 through 10 we are reminded that the temple was built according to the divine design revealed to Moses, but that it was merely a figure of the heavenly reality.

Man has long been fascinated with what we currently call alternative realities or alternate universes. Or, what it would be like to pass right through that mirror, or looking glass, to the reality on the other side. As believers we are assured that there is another reality that we can not now see with our eyes or experience with our senses. Yet, we are told that we have spiritual access to that reality right now. Hebrews 4:16 admonishes us to come boldly into the very presence of God on his throne in the holy of holies. Supernatural is just as real as natural — just beyond natural, on the other side of the looking glass.

In biblical times the nation of Israel’s life was centered around Jerusalem and its temple. How much more should our lives be centered around the reality on the other side of the mirror? What would such lives look like? What are the practical implications of this? I don’t have a good grip on it, but I am sure thinking that it doesn’t mean we would look like freaks or act obnoxiously. It would mean that we would be different, distinct, set apart from others who do not know God. But, what does that look like?

VACATION UPDATE: On Friday evening Cheryl and I took the 3 and 1/2 hour train ride from Quebec City to Montreal. What a contrast! We went from a very small, quaint city to the largest French-speaking city in the world outside of Paris. I got a steal on a downtown hotel room on a Montreal tourism web special and it’s a very nice hotel right in the heart of the city. Talk about cosmopolitan! The weather has not been too great these past couple of days and we have spent a lot of time in the Underground City — 18 miles of city under the city. That’s right — 18 miles of shopping, services and eating beneath the ground. Pretty interesting. We come up for air every so often, but tomorrow the weather is supposed to turn nice.