It is still dark and so I get up. There is just enough light so I can move around the shadows of objects in my path as I walk towards the shower. There are two lights in my bathroom. One in the stall shower itself and the other off to the opposite side of the bathroom.

As I have done a thousand times before, I turn the shower on as hot as possible then wait before the shower door, until I see the steam rise. So I wait patiently for the steam to begin filling the stall. Somehow this morning I notice something that must have always been there but eluded my gaze till now.

The steam fills the shower stall. The light inside is soft and gently illuminates the clear stall door that is now filled with steam. There before me is me. It is really not me but a soft image of me, a faded color image, yet with enough detail to recognize me…as if I was looking through a mirror dimly.

As I turned, my eye caught a glimpse of something shiny that came and went with the movement of my body. Sort of like a mirror off in the distance used to reflect light by someone sending a message to someone else far away.

I steadied myself at an angle that allowed this image to come alive. There it was standing out off of my body, clear and bright and solid against a faded image of me. It looked surreal because the image seemed solid while my body seemed almost spirit like. The image reflecting the light was the gold Cross that I wear around my neck.

When I first became a believer in Christ in May of 1985, Elyse bought me this Cross. I remember the emotions I felt as I humbly began to wear the symbol that brought together in One Person, All the Pain people will ever experience throughout time and ALL the Love that God gave to us by allowing His One and ONLY Son to die for each of us on HIS CROSS.

It was interesting to see this portrait of me within the shower door. It brought to mind several thoughts like the statement that in this world we see through a mirror dimly. This world is not real. Sure it feels real, our bodies have been designed to experience this physical world by God. But the real us is the person inside our body. The essence of Ernie is spirit not the flesh of my body.

In a very real sense the faded image of me on the shower door is the true me. And the reflection of the Gold Cross that stands out of my image symbolizes one spirit claimed by the Lord on the Cross 2,000 years ago as HIS. For I carry His sign on my body. The sign that confirms I was bought and paid for by HIS Blood.

When we get to heaven we will look back at all of life here and it will be like the song lyrics “misty water colored memories of the way we were”. All of us are like the faded image of me within the shower stall door.

We exist on this plane of life, so real to us, yet it is nothing more than a world of shadow figures living in shadows.

The only way to become solid and real in the future is to have that bold, bright shining solid gold Cross within your body. He calls you home out of this dream into a world of real love and relationships that will never fail you. A world where there is no pain, no hunger a world beyond time…a world where you will no longer walk by faith but you will be able to walk with the Son of God by sight.

The next time you take a hot shower …take a long introspective look at the faded image of yourself. When you look at you… in your shower door… will you see His Cross over your heart, within your spirit?