"… for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (1 Sam 16:7)

Samuel was a wise old man. He was the last of the great judges of Israel and the first of the great prophets. Yet even Samuel was tempted to judge by outward appearances. Jesse’s eldest son, Eliab, must have been a handsome, strapping young man. He had the look of a leader, and the maturity we would expect in one we would choose to be our leader. Samuel was all set to anoint him as Israel’s new king, the one who would succeed Saul on the throne.

But a part of Samuel’s wisdom was an openness to listen to God and to seek to do God’s will. As is so often the case, God turns precedent and human wisdom on their heads and chooses not the eldest, nor even one of his older siblings, but the youngest of the lot, still a teenager at the time. We don’t even learn his name until after Samuel anoints him and we are told, "… and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward." (1 Sam 16:13) God doesn’t always choose those whom we would deem "qualified", but God does "qualify those whom he chooses".

We tend to put a lot of stock in "doing"; we’re much less enamored of simply "being" and waiting on God. The parable of the growing seed - the first of Jesus’ two parables in our Gospel for today - points us toward our dependence on God’s provision for us as opposed to the "in-charge, do it yourself" attitude we tend to take in regard to life. This parable is about how things happen in the Kingdom of God.

"The kingdom of God", Jesus tells us, "is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head." (Mk 4:26-28)

If my name happens to be "someone", my responsibilities are pretty limited, and my degree of control is virtually non-existent according to this parable. All I can do is to "scatter the seed on the ground" - do what I believe to be both right and my duty - then go about my normal business and wait for God the earth in the parable - to do his thing.

Beloved, this is really hard to do! Our natural impulse is to get down on our hands and knees and dig those seeds up to make sure they are sprouting and growing the way we think they should be. We want to be in control of the process; but we’re not in control - God is! Our meddling at this stage of the game can only mess things up. Our job is to wait - only to wait! Only when the harvest is ripe will we again have a role to play in the process.

Waiting is where the confidence and faith Paul speaks of today are so important to us. Because of what Jesus has done for us by his death and resurrection, we are constrained to defer to God when it comes to sitting in judgement - either of ourselves or of others. Only God can give us eyes to see the heart; and this, Paul tells us, is exactly what God does for us through Jesus. "From now on, therefore," Paul tells us, "we regard no one from a human point of view. Even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Cor 5:16-17)

May God grant us eyes to see the heart; to see everyone and everything as a part of God’s new creation in Christ; even as God, for Christ’s sake, sees you and me.