“Windows or Mirrors?” by Josh Tillery

Posted by sam

What does Camp Ridgecrest mean to you? What has it taught you about pursuing a life with Jesus?

I want you to think about the story of the good Samaritan. A Jewish man is robbed, beaten, and left to die on the road. He is ignored by two respectable people of the community – the equivalent of a pastor and a lawyer. Who ends up helping this man? A Samaritan! What’s significant about that? Samaritans and Jews didn’t interact. Jews normally looked down on Samaritans. It’d be like Darth Vader and a Jedi hanging out – it doesn’t happen! So why would  the Samaritan help him before a preacher or a lawyer? Because it had nothing to do with his place in society, but everything to do with the focus of his heart.

Is your heart focused on seeing the world through mirrors or windows?

When we look at mirrors, all we see is ourselves. We make all of our decisions based on how good it makes us look. How do I get more Instagram followers? Do I seem smart to others at school? Can everyone see how good I am at sports? How does my hair look? Looking through mirror to make decisions focuses us on what is beneficial for us and nothing else. We tend to focus on building ourselves up and putting others down. Maybe that shows through how we talk about them. Maybe it’s through our inability to make sacrifices of our time, money, efforts, or comfortability. All of this is a result of us looking through a mirror to see what is best for us.

What if each of us  focused on looking through windows as we went throughout our day? Imagine a world that daily lived in a way that mimicked Philippians 2:3 – “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” What is it  like to live through window-looking decision making? THAT! That’s what it looks like. Counting others more significant than ourselves.  

C.S. Lewis writes, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less… A real humble man will not be thinking about humility, he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

This is the goal. When we are able to get to a point in our lives where we are thinking of ourselves less, that’s when we begin to experience real life. When we are able to see the world through a window, not a mirror, we begin to count others more significant than ourselves. And when we can focus our hearts in this way, that’s when we really begin to live a life that mimics the example of a sacrifice that Jesus outlined while he was here on earth.

That’s what Camp Ridgecrest has taught me. I see sacrifice, I see people counting others more significant than themselves. I see people mimicking the life of Jesus. I see people focusing on windows, not mirrors.

Your brother in Christ,
Proclaiming Tuzi


Posted in Echoes From Final Fire | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a reply