Jesus,

who fulfilled the Word of God and is himself called the Word (John

1:1), set the standard for Christian living. Comparing yourself to

anyone else will never give an accurate picture of who God wants you

to be.

James

uses the example of looking into a mirror but doing nothing to

improve our appearance. The kind of mirror James is talking about was

not made of glass like our mirrors today. It would have been a highly

polished piece of metal, and to get a clear image, you would have to

look intently, holding it at just the right angle with just the right

amount of light. James explains that we have to look intently into

the law of God to see what God wants us to be. Notice that the focus

is not on looking at oneself or at anyone else. The ­focus is on

God’s law—the image of the person God wants you to become.

With

God’s Word as the standard, says James, we must be doers of the

Word, and that means putting God first in all we do and showing

Christlike love to everyone around us. It means looking out and

caring for people whom everyone else forgets: the most vulnerable,

such as widows and ­orphans, who don’t have ­others to lean

on. It means caring for those who cannot care for themselves.

Who

are those people in your community? How can you be a Christlike

influence in the world instead of being influenced by the world?