Week 11 1 Samuel
The story of Samuel meeting David’s family and then choosing David as the king-to-be is a pretty interesting one.
Jesse had eight sons and he & Samuel went through a kind of Future King Selection Process. They didn’t have explicit directions from the Lord about how to run it so decided to go with common sense categories like birth-order maturity qualifications experience strength appearance physical-size & like that. But almost right away the Lord tipped Samuel off about something he should have already known: don’t judge by his appearance or height…The Lord doesn’t make decisions the way you do! People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at a person’s thoughts and intentions.
I underlined the section in my bible because it’s a useful thing to remember: the Lord doesn’t make decisions the way I do. He takes other things into consideration, invisible internal unknown things. Things I don’t see or care about. So he has a vision advantage. By contrast I’m going into a dark room with my sunglasses on.
The idea sticks with me; concerns me a bit too.
I turn it around: I don’t see things the way the Lord sees them. He and I don’t see eye-to-eye.
Seeing the wrong way isn’t that much better than being blind. So I can have an argument with myself about who sees best, the Lord or me. But it’s a goofy debate if I’m the one with glaucoma.
Note: quote from 1 Samuel 16:7 (NLT)