St. Paul’s Cycle of Prayer – Wednesday – Paul’s Place after school program and the St. Paul’s Day School

From the 1 Samuel reading for today, chapter 16 – the story of Samuel anointing David as future king. As Jesse’s sons are paraded in front of Samuel, each is rejected by God despite what Samuel may think: “for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

St. Paul echoes this in 2nd Corinthians 5:16-20: “16-20Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!” (The Message).

In this day and age when we seem to be polarizing more than ever, separating people by race or economic status or which particular denominational beliefs they hold to be true, we would do well to remember – the Lord does not see as we see, he sees our hearts. And as followers of Christ, we are also called to no longer look at people from a human point of view. We have all been made one in Christ, all created new. High time we lived like we believed that.