I guarantee either you, or one you lead, struggles with body, image, or body image problems. It’s unarguably one of the most pertinent topics for modern ministry.  So pertinent, and expansive, really, that I’ll not pretend one chunk of thoughts suffices for conclusions.  But as I’ve said before, blogging is fun cause random chunks and admitted inconclusions are okay.  So here goes...
 
I’ve been struggling with my own image issues lately, so decided to put a blanket over my full-length mirror.  It’s been great. Has forced me to ponder “seeing myself” and “what I look like,” from a different angle.  And oddly enough, drawn me back to an afternoon in northern Uganda last summer.  Walking with a local through random bush villages, at one point he warned, “Now most of these people have never seen a white person, so there’s no telling how they’ll react.” What he didn’t tell me, however, was that “most of these people” were children—most of this village was under age fifteen, so young in years, maybe, but severely aged in what they’d seen. For the brunt of the afternoon, I spent time playing with kids of a different generation, different language and different worldview.  Statistically speaking, I’ll live to 78.  They’ll be lucky to make next year.  I have a set of parents, plus godparents and a handful of random parents, who could further parent me should something happen to my own.  These kids are their own.
 
Most of my time was spent with a family of nine.  Both parents had died, leaving their oldest at 11’ish and youngest less than six months.  Not only had none of them seen a white person, but neither had any of them seen themselves. The closest they’d come was the reflection from a shallow puddle, or shiny knife.  So suffice it to say, introductions to a digital camera were pure magic.  At first they seemed to think it was a gun, scared to death and wanting nothing to do with this black weapon.  But eventually, they realized the little tool could produce some pretty unbelievable shrapnel. It delivered a picture that was bright, detailed and somehow familiar.  Upon seeing one of the images, the eleven-year-old “mom” of the family ran away crying.  I wonder what she saw? Before long, dots were connected and reflections on the screen quickly yielded into mimics of our scene. And soon after that, logic caught pace with imagination, or imagination with logic, and it was realized they, then, must be in those reflections too? For the first time, these people saw what they looked like.  And yet somehow, it was still evident to me that they knew better than me what their true imaged entailed.
 
To fathom a world without mirrors…a world without measuring panes of size, shape and beauty, or seasoned sightings of how one looks…is unfathomable.  So I’ve been wondering if maybe seeing and sight has a more expansive definition than I’ve been sold—or “reflection” a less holistic answer to my “image”?  Maybe “seeing ourselves,” as we know it, isn’t the end, or beginning, it’s cracked-up to?  Though black boxes and glass are unarguably cool, maybe they don’t see all reality, or show all of ones self?  Furthermore, maybe there are other ways to learn what I look like, than a mirror, screen, or Facebook photo.  It seems that since I am inside of me, I am incapable of fully seeing me.  So maybe like these children, God permits other ways of learning to see—like seeing inwardly, as a means to my outward?  
 
How is it that I surrender something unseen (myself), to Someone unseen (God), in belief that doing so will allow me to see (faith, as described in Hebrews 11:1)?  
 
Maybe our ability to see is somehow rooted in our ability to know?  So that in learning to know ones self, we actually learn what we look like?
 
Let me get back to you.