A few weekends ago I spent the night with my brother.  Early Sunday morning I took a walk behind his house and wandered through the weeds and the woods to this lake which sits near Pond Creek and the edge of Sand Mountain.  The combination of clear skies and calm winds transformed this small body of water into a giant mirror, reflecting the beauty of a morning I will not soon forget.

        Mirrors by nature reflect back to us what is set in front of them.  Place an apple in front of a mirror and what do you see, a lemon?  Of course not, you see the reflection of an apple.  I have seen many types of mirrors in my life.  I have stood in juvenile detention centers, jails and truck stops and seen mirrors made of polished metal; I have seen my reflection cast back at me from carnival mirrors and witnessed my shape change from giant, dwarf, thin and fat within seconds of each other.

        As I studied this photo and pondered its message, I came across this verse, “A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror”.  How true that is; if I am constantly in a bad mood, grumpy, critical, arrogant and snobby, guess what kind of environment I will end up living in?  I can tell you this; it will be less than pleasant.  Why?  Because we get reflected back to us exactly what we give.  We reap what we sow; we get what we give; what goes around comes around; what’s got badly goes badly. 

        Smile at life and life will smile back at you.  Be hateful, vengeful and unforgiving and guess what will be coming your way?  Everyone makes his own bed; for some it is a bed of nails, and for others it is soft and comfortable, and the choice is totally up to us.  Love makes everything lovely, so where there is no love, put love in, and you will be able to draw some out.  Do you want kindness, compassion and honesty in your life?  Begin today and start creating the sort of life you desire.  Do unto others as if you were the others.  What have you got to lose?

Something to think about:

• You can no more blame circumstances for your character than the mirror for your appearance.

• To find out what’s wrong in my life I need only to look in the mirror.

• The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such seed.

• The tissue of the Life to be

• We weave with colors all our own,
  And in the field of destiny
  We reap as we have sown.

• Sowing kindness is life’s best investment.

• The person who sows seeds of kindness will have a perpetual harvest.

Your friend
Rickey Moore