Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Samuel chapter 16:
6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.” 7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 8 Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9 Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10 And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen these.” 11 Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.” 12 And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
In today's Lesson the priest Samuel has been told by the Spirit of the LORD that he is to anoint one of the sons of Jesse as King. He comes and is immediately taken with the appearance of Jesse's oldest son Eliab. But then the LORD tells Samuel not to look on outward appearance, for the LORD looks on the heart, and Eliab's heart is apparently not fit for the task. So then all the other sons of Jesse are brought forward until finally the youngest, David, is brought in.
This is when the Scripture does something interesting. It says that David was ruddy and beautiful and handsome. Because we had been told Samuel should not look on outward appearances, we had come to expect that the one anointed would be like the ugly ducking, awkward in appearance but a swan inside. But no! This son David, the one to be anointed, in fact looks just like what Samuel wished for in the appearance of the King-to-be.
And herein is the irony. Along with Samuel, we first seek a leader who looks like a leader in appearance. But after being told not to judge by outward appearance, it is the outward appearance of David that then nonetheless surprises and secretly delights us. Unmasked is our obsession with outward appearance, our sub-conscious bias for beauty, AND our still sub-unconscious notion that a beautiful heart cannot be found beneath a beautiful face. Here we see the full blessing and curse of beauty and our infatuation with it.
God looks not on outward appearance but on the heart. And the first step toward learning to see as God sees is the bringing to conscious awareness just how persistent and misleading our eyes can be.
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