Turning Disadvantages to Your Advantage

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that believers behold truth as in a mirror dimly. At best, each of us holds only a piece of that mirror, broken in the Fall. 

When I traveled to Belarus after the breakup of the Soviet Union, part of our group visited a summer camp, Zoubryonok near Lake Narach. What stark contrast the camp provided to the barren, ill-equipped hospitals that we had visited in Minsk, and the concrete apartment buildings built during the early 1960’s, housing blocks known as the “Khrushchev slums.” 

This lake had been the site of a battle in the Napoleonic war in 1812. Big excursion boats that resemble steamboats on the Mississippi River serve as monuments around the lake at various camps, reminders of more prosperous times. 

Our guide Irene #2, who was called Irenie, shared this story about the lake.

Legend has it there was a village here. A girl, Alana, lived here. She was very kind and well-loved, but she was not pretty. She would often go into the woods to gather berries and one day she got lost. Something shiny caught her eye.

It turned out to be a mirror that hid all the disadvantages a man could have. Her mother did not recognize her when she came home. Alana had become beautiful. The daughter gave the mirror to her mother and her mother became young. Many people came to look and were changed. But a rich man, cruel and unjust, tried to take the mirror away by force. He too wanted to be rid of his disadvantages. Alana managed to take the mirror away from him, but it broke into pieces. Everywhere the pieces fell, streams appeared and then united into one big lake.

The Sacred Mirror Reflects

Irenie’s use of the word “disadvantages” captured my imagination. Standing amidst this wooded forest, a glorious day in a vibrant setting, our group was there to celebrate Belarus’s break from the Soviet Union. Freedom.

Campers wore medieval costumes to portray a bloody battle in the 16^th century when Belarus fought the Huns and won the victory. Our guide Timur said that the nation’s flag had previously been all white but after this battle, the soldiers wiped the blood from their swords on the flag. As before in the history of Belarus, the flag raised that day had one red horizontal stripe.

Timur said, “We are a peaceful country but can defend ourselves if necessary.” 

My takeaway from that day is how in time disadvantages can turn to advantages. A Christian, when looking into “the perfect law of liberty,” which is how James refers to the Word of God, is given the ability to see life from God’s point of view.

Only I have to keep looking into the mirror of God’s Word in order first to recognize and then to remember what the Bible shows me about me.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

James 1:22–25

Forgetting comes easy. Remembering takes effort.

“However bitter the moments before the looking-glass were to him, he quickly forgot them, and forgot them for a long time, ‘abandoning himself entirely to ideas and to real life,’ as he formulated it to himself.” 

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Formulating ideas to suit ourselves in order to adapt to “real life” characterizes the human condition. Justifying our actions and beliefs is inherent in our nature, which explains why we need to look into the mirror of God’s word in order to see ourselves as God sees us.

The Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The team I traveled with had taken medical supplies and Bibles to distribute in Belarus soon after the republics had regained their autonomy. For 70 years under Communist rule, Bibles had been banned.

Older people actually cried when they were handed a Russian translation of the Bible. Younger people received Russian translations of the New Testament. Children received translated Bibles with pictures.

The people who walked in darkness

    have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

    on them has light shone.

Isaiah 9:2

A sad post script to the lake story, we were told that this camp and others like it is where children of Belarus and other republics of the former Soviet Union were removed from their homes for weeks each summer and indoctrinated in the tenets of Communism. This particular camp had been designated for children of the KGB, the Russian state security agency. Entire generations of young children had been indoctrinated as atheists.

Focus Transforms Thinking

In Paul’s message to the Corinthians, he exhorted believers to focus on Jesus Christ, because what we focus on has a lot to do with who we become.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3: 17–18

What I have counted as disadvantages in my life have in the long run turned to advantages. While I hold only a piece of the broken mirror, and the edges are sharp, the sacred mirror of God’s Word has revealed that without my disadvantages I would not have recognized or appreciated the advantages God has given me. 

My disadvantages magnify God’s grace and have actually contributed to making me who I am. My trip to Belarus underscored the advantage of having my own Bible and the freedom to read it.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

1 Corinthians 13:12