July 31 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

1 Samuel 16:1-13

¹And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.
²And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the LORD said, Take an heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the LORD.
³And call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will shew thee what thou shalt do: and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name unto thee.
⁴And Samuel did that which the LORD spake, and came to Bethlehem. And the elders of the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest thou peaceably?
⁵And he said, Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the LORD: sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice. And he sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice.
⁶And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on Eliab, and said, Surely the LORD's anointed is before him.
⁷But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.
⁸Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, Neither hath the LORD chosen this.
⁹Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. And he said, Neither hath the LORD chosen this.
¹⁰Again, Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. And Samuel said unto Jesse, The LORD hath not chosen these.
¹¹And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither.
¹²And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the LORD said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he.
¹³Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.

Devotional

Our children may be over-concerned about clothing and personal appearance. They may show more interest in their outward appearance than in the needs of the soul. So we quote to them the second half of verse 7, 'The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.' We probably do not quote it often enough.

But there is something else in this passage. Even Jesse was looking at the exterior, the image, the position, when he brought only the older sons to Samuel. Young David, the shepherd boy, was summarily dismissed. Was it because he was a 'stupid' shepherd? Was it because he was 'the baby'?

One of the things of which we as parents must constantly be aware is not to dub our children, either openly or in our own minds, the 'firstborn,' 'the middle child,' 'the baby,' 'the brain,' 'the red-head,' 'the beauty queen,' 'the clown,' 'the one with all thumbs'! Parents do much harm in actually playing up a minor characteristic of a child, placing him into a mold he may always have to struggle to break out of. We must not lose sight of the person who is behind the exterior. Once the label is on the bottle it is sometimes difficult to get it off, even if the content is changed. And by listing only one of the ingredients on the label we often lose sight of other much more significant ingredients.

There was a girl who was really very ugly in childhood because of a facial disfigurement. She was talented and had much ability, but whenever her achievements forced her into the public eye she withdrew from this activity and started from scratch in some other endeavor! The time came when through remarkable surgery she was rid of her deformity and was now regarded as truly beautiful. But she still thought of herself as ugly and recoiled from being in the public eye. It was a long difficult struggle for her to form a new self-image. In a similar way, it is possible for parents to give their children malformed pictures of themselves from which they may not be able to escape in later life.

When God warned us against making graven images He was talking about something else. But there is a sense in which we can make the same application in our home. We must seek to know our children. Then we must very cautiously seek to help them to deal with their weak points or physical or dispositional problems. We certainly must not contribute toward forming in them a low self-image to which they will feel compelled to conform. We need rather to encourage them to a confidence in what is possible for them to be in Christ, helping them to develop their gifts.

O God, keep us from the foibles of parents in not really allowing our children the freedom of developing into the kind of people they are capable of becoming by Your grace.