" . . . Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." I Samuel 16:7
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My neighbor has a tree in her yard that I have always thought was an eyesore that needed to be cut down. -
One morning I was visiting with her on her porch (as I often do on my morning walks), and she looked out and said, "I like that old tree. It has character."
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Suddenly I began to look at it differently. Rather than seeing an old, rotten tree, I began to think of it as a tree with a story to tell. How old was it? What had it seen during its life? Had children of yesteryear climbed up into its branches, looking out over the neighborhood? And now it was a playground for birds who regularly visited the feeder my friend had hung on it, and for squirrels, who likely made their home in its hollows.
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I will never look at the tree the same way, now that I know it has "character."
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How often do we judge people this way? They may be old, unattractive or handicapped, and we label them in our minds accordingly. But what if we looked instead at their character? Wouldn't we see them in a completely different way?
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Like the old tree, I need to look at a person's character, at their heart, as God does. I will likely find that there is a lot more there than meets the eye.
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