The Mirror of Erised

I am an avid Harry Potter fan, and one of my favorite moments from the entire series is when Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised. (To see a clip of this from the movie, you can click here.) If you are familiar with this story, you know that the Mirror of Erised is not an ordinary mirror. This is a magical object that shows the person looking into it “nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of [their] hearts” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone). The inscription along the top of the mirror, when read backwards, reads, “I show not your face but your heart’s desire.” 

It is a bittersweet moment when Harry stumbles across the mirror. Harry, who never knew his parents, sees himself with his family. The mirror reveals that his greatest desire is to be united with his family, to experience this joy he has never known. 

I have often wondered what I would see if I were to look into a real-life Mirror of Erised. What is my heart’s deepest, most desperate desire? Perhaps it is a good thing that I will never be able to peer into such an object. Dumbledore, Harry’s Headmaster, warned him that “Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone). 

The word desire means to wish, long for, or want something. In God’s Word, the Psalms teach us about desire. David wrote in Psalm 27:4, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” Of everything he could have sought or wanted, above all, David wanted to worship the Lord. He wanted to dwell in His sanctuary and admire His glory. 

As Christians, our hearts’ truest desire should be to worship God. This does mean that, yes, we desire to worship Him in church! But it also means making our lives an act of worship to the Lord. I’ve heard it said that everything we do is either an act of worship to God or an act of defiance towards God. This is why the New Testament encourages us to offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice to God as our spiritual worship (Romans 12:1). 

Oh…but what if this isn’t what we desire? We are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30); but we are imperfect people serving a perfect God. We don’t measure up to this standard, and we fall short of the holy calling the Lord has called us to. This means, naturally, that we will not desire to worship the Lord, to seek and dwell in His house all our days. At times, our desires will be disoriented. We will sin, and we will prioritize lesser pursuits while the Lord longs for us to desire Him alone. 

The solution to this is found in Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This verse does not mean that if we go to church, sing in the choir, or donate to charity, God will give us whatever we want. Rather, as we do what David sought after—as we worship God both in church and also every moment of our lives—the Lord will give us what we desire. He will do this because, having delighted in Him, our desires will be aligned with God’s will. 

I have just one more verse from the Psalms. Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” Can we say this in truth? Can we boldly declare that there is nothing on earth we desire besides the Lord? I can only speak for myself, but I know there are other desires competing for the Lord’s attention in my life. 

If you don’t desire God like you feel you should, delight yourself in the Lord. Seek hard after God. Drink deeply from the ever-flowing fountain of His Word. Spend time in prayer, communicating with the God who stands ready to hear and answer His children. Fellowship with Christians who will point you closer to the Lord and make you more like Him through your closeness to them. 

I don’t know what you would see if you looked in the Mirror of Erised, but my hope is that we all delight ourselves in the Lord so that we desire nothing on earth besides Him.