There's a fascinating story in the Old Testament where God directs the prophet Samuel to meet the eight sons of Jesse and anoint one of them as the next king of Israel. Samuel meets Jesse's oldest son, and Samuel thinks that he surely is standing before the future king. The son, Eliab, is a tall, strapping young man with the looks of a leader. Then the Lord surprises Samuel, saying: "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7 (NIV). Jesse parades six more sons past Samuel, but none is the future king. Finally, when Samuel asks Jesse if he has any other sons, Jesse sends for David, his eighth and youngest son, who was such an after-thought in the selection process that Jesse had left him in the fields to tend the family's sheep. Surely, little David isn't king material. But when David finally arrives, Samuel anoints him as the next king after God says, "This is the one." 1 Sam. 16:12 (NIV). In a sermon entitled "The Lord Looks on the Heart," my father wrote that where Jesse "could only see [David's] youth and inexperience, the Lord saw the potential that was to become the greatest king Israel ever would have. God would call David from protecting sheep to protecting a Chosen People."
| Samuel Anointing David by Mattia Preti |
While we may be unnerved at first by the thought of an all-knowing God who can "x-ray us spiritually", this same God has the "power to free us from all the man-made roles and prejudices and restraints that tie us down and keep us from being all that we can be. When the world is trying to force you into a mold that doesn't fit, when other people's expectations are chipping away and disfiguring the real you, then it is time to bask in the assurance that 'man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.' When the folks around you -- even your wife or husband, your parents or children -- see you and treat you as they want you to be, God knows and treats you as you really are. There is no substitute for the Lord's friendship. With [God] there is no pretending; we are stripped naked and total honesty prevails. Yet, no matter what [God] sees, [God] loves us. The chaff of our lives is winnowed away and burned, and the pure grain is harvested with great rejoicing."
"How much we long for this honest, affirming relationship -- with anyone, and our search among the people around us seems fruitless. Where is there someone who will recognize my gifts as a person and encourage and help me to develop them, rather than treating me just as a minister, as a Black, as a Jew, as a Puerto Rican, as a woman, as a man, as a teenager, as a truck driver, as a secretary? 'Man looks on the outward appearance.' The world's way is to stereotype us, to put us in a pigeon-hole and thus suppress the many varied gifts God has given us."
My dad gave examples from married life "to illustrate the damage done to people, the violence committed against their person, the violation of the holy creation of God that occurs by treating others only in broad categories rather than as unique individuals, by looking at them as man does, on the outward appearance." He noted that "[t]he woman who is treated fondly by her husband as though she were a 'Suzy Homemaker Doll' -- while she may be adored and have lovely children and every earthly [possession] she could possibly want -- will find her hostility building and the marriage relationship deteriorating because her husband has made her a prisoner of a stereotype and has not recognized and encouraged and affirmed the wide diversity of gifts God has given her." On the other hand, "the husband who is treated by his wife and children only as a bread-winner and protector -- the strong one who will handle all crises and keep his little family supplied and safe from all storms of the outside world -- this man finds himself with mixed feelings about his family. He loves them, but they also seem to use him and make him into something he cannot be all the time. Subtly, they refuse him permission to indulge in any of the more tender and vulnerable qualities he may possess. His son would be eager to tell his friends that his dad hunts or runs marathons, but not so proud that his dad scrubs the toilets on Saturdays or likes to read novels in his spare time."
Instead of "fall[ing] for the temptation to type-cast people," my dad urged that "we completely surrender ourselves to the Lord so that we start seeing into each other's hearts rather than judging and treating each other by appearances only." He went on: "There is such great joy and blessing in being God's instrument in releasing others to burst into full flower and to use all the gifts and talents God has given to them. One of our greatest ministries as Christians is to look into the inmost being of others and nurture and tease out the wonderful qualities God has planted there -- qualities that for too long have been suppressed because of the superficial expectations we've imposed on such persons."
"Let's begin today to do God's work in letting each other break free from the prison of outward appearance to the full expression of who we really are in our hearts, who we really are in Christ Jesus."
From "The Lord Looks on the Heart"
1 Samuel 16:1-18
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