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It is interesting how God can so frequently make the most out of the least; or, as Paul says,
something out of nothing. Moses is a good example. He thought he was totally inadequate
to the task God wanted him to perform. God thought otherwise. This morning I preached
on the anointing of David, the selection by Samuel, with God’s guidance, of David as King
over Israel. Samuel is instructed to go to the family of Jesse to select on of Jesse’s sons to
be king. Jesse had eight sons, but the rationality of that time would have led one to believe
that the oldest of the eight, the first-born, would be the one that God would choose. As it
turned out, God reversed the order and chose the youngest, David, who wasn’t even at the
convention when the selecting was going on. Jesse had him out keeping the sheep, thinking
that he wasn’t even worth considering. My favorite passage from this text was God’s
message to Samuel, when Samuel thought the first son of Jesse would be chosen: “the Lord
does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the
heart.” We might alter those words a bit and say, “they judge a book by its cover, but the
Lord judges a book by its contents.” I suspect that there is an eternal truth here. I think
humans then and now tend toward superficial judgments. Indeed, we even program and
plan our lives to deal with that superficiality. One would think that the story of nativity
would cause us to think about this. Jesus was born in a barn to poor parents who weren’t
even “officially” married. Jesus’ first visits were from shepherds, one of the lowest
occupations in the culture. If he were born today, would we pay attention? Personally, I
think that the organized, institutional church needs to be mindful of those words, “the Lord
does not see as mortals see.” We tend to mimic the culture rather than run counter to it.
We think that in order for the church to “grow”--and we believe that we must do so at all
costs--we must adopt all of the techniques of the secular culture. And I think we may end
up with a church that is no longer the church any more. But getting back to David, he was
out in the fields tending sheep, because it did not occur to Jesse that he might be in the
running to be selected by God through Samuel. How often, in the life of the church, or in
our personal lives, to we overlook what might please God because we are so hung up on our
superficial understandings of the world? I have a bias, and it is toward the small church. I
think the institutional church is so enamored with large congregations that it treats the
small church like David. We act as if God doesn’t really care about small congregations.
Certainly, there are things that large congregations can do that small ones cannot; but are
we not assuming that we see as God sees? posted by
John Harrison at 8:11 PM
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