This is not a modern phenomenon.
When God sent the prophet Samuel to find a new king
for Israel, God told Samuel that the new king would be one of the sons of
Jesse.
So Samuel went to Bethlehem and met Jesse and Jesse’s
sons.
Jesse had many sons. One may very well have been a
baker, going with his bread like always: the same old bread and rolls to sell.
There were seven sons of Jesse.
There’s no man in town as admired as Eliab. He was
everyone’s favorite guy. Everyone was awed and inspired by him, and it’s not
very hard to see why. No one’s slick as Eliab, no one’s quick as Eliab… well,
you get the idea.
When Samuel saw Eliab, he said, “Surely this is the
one!”
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his
appearance. Do not judge him by his looks; the Lord doesn’t see as people see; beauty
is found within; the Lord looks on the heart, and I have rejected him.”
What? No one says no to Eliab! Dismissed? Rejected?
Publicly humiliated? It was almost more than he could bear.
Then Jesse called all the rest of his sons, to pass before
Samuel. But none of them was the one chosen by the Lord.
So Samuel said to Jesse, “Are these all your sons?”
Then Jesse said, “Well, there is an eighth son, the
youngest, but he’s out taking care of the sheep.”
Someone who had been out taking care of sheep would
not be a pretty sight, especially if he had been summoned straight from the
field. His ragged clothes would be dirty. His hair uncombed. And he would stink.
People don’t like what they don’t understand; in fact,
it scares them. And what people don’t understand, what they find frightening,
they fight. They become bullies.
If we jump ahead to the next chapter of 1 Samuel, we
find that even this youngest son’s own brothers pick on him and are mean to
him. Eliab even becomes angry at him, and ridicules him, and tries to send him
away. “Why are you here?” Eliab yells at him. “You don’t belong here. Why
aren’t you with your sheep? Go on, get out of here.”
It’s probably what Eliab wanted to say when Samuel insisted that this youngest brother be
summoned from the field, but with Samuel and his father and all the town’s
elders present, Eliab kept his mouth shut.
It seems that a
great feast had been prepared for them – evidently the youngest brother, out
with the sheep, didn’t even get an invitation – and not only did Samuel insist
that the younger brother be sent for, Samuel said “no one sits down at the
table until he arrives.”
So they waited. The food was getting cold. I’m sure
many couldn’t believe that they had to wait and let the food get cold, all
because of this shepherd, this beast, who they hadn’t even invited, who
they never invite to any of their
gatherings…
And when he arrived, yeah, he may have been dirty, and
he may have stunk… but Samuel noticed that he had beautiful eyes. Symbolically,
eyes are a window to the soul, to what’s on the inside, so in other words,
Samuel had learned what the Lord had taught him: Samuel had learned to look on
his heart.
So Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in
the presence of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon
David from that day forward.
I wish I could say that the oil used in the anointing
washed away all the dirt, all the ugliness that the other brothers and
villagers saw, and revealed the beauty within. I think the world did come to
see – eventually – the beauty and the
goodness of David, but at least among his brothers, it didn’t happen right
away. Like I said, in the next chapter, they are still picking on him.
But the Lord saw David’s beauty and goodness, and that
beauty and goodness are what would allow David to become a good king, an ideal
king for Israel. It wasn’t until much later that the world saw what God saw:
the beauty that was within David all along.
Just look at all the public shaming that still takes
place! Even among our nation’s leaders! Former Arkansas governor and Baptist
pastor Mike Huckabee recently mocked and ridiculed Caitlyn Jenner, the
transgender woman formerly known as Bruce Jenner. Ignoring the challenges
Caitlyn Jenner faced and the courage she’s demonstrated, Mike Huckabee made fun
of her, saying, “I wish someone could have told me when I was in high school
that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE;
I’m pretty sure I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘coach, I think
I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”
He meant it as a joke, but it was mean-spirited and
rooted in his own ignorance…
But we don’t have to follow the bullies. We don’t have
to join the mob in attacking whoever or whatever it is that we don’t
understand.
So Jake and his friends Gus, Tyler, Landon, and Jack
decided that from now on, they would have James’ back.
At lunch, the five boys invite James to their table.
James’ mom said that before, James didn’t want “to go out for recess or
anything; it would be like a struggle… Now he can barely eat his lunch to get
outside to play with those guys.”
As these boys got to know James, they learned that he
was adopted from an orphanage in Columbia, and that six years later he lost his
new father in a bicycling accident. They also learned that James loves sports,
and has a notebook with stats for over 600 college sports teams. And when those
five boys learned that James didn’t have his own playstation, they bought him
one as a present. They brought it to him at his house, set it up, and played –
the first time James had ever had friends come over to play.
There will always be bullies in the world: on the
playground, on social media, in politics.
The good news is that we don’t have to listen to them,
and we don’t have to follow them.
The good news is that we have a God who doesn’t see
things the way most people see things, a God who says to each and every person:
you are beautiful.
The good news is that we can learn to see as God sees,
and see the beauty within.
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