God corrects a prophet in this verse. Samuel looks at Jesse’s oldest son, tall and impressive, and thinks the search is over. God tells him he is looking at the wrong things. People see the outside. God sees the heart.
Most of us have been on one side of this or the other. You were passed over for the promotion that went to the person who talks well in meetings. Your family always seems to notice your brother first. Or you are the one who sizes people up in the first thirty seconds by how they dress and how confident they sound, and you are usually wrong about who is worth listening to.
The scene is a little comic. Samuel arrives in Bethlehem to anoint a new king. Jesse brings his sons one by one, seven of them, and each time Samuel has to say, not this one. Finally he asks whether these are all the sons. There is still the youngest, Jesse says, but he is out tending the sheep. David was so far from anyone’s idea of a king that his own father did not think to bring him in from the field.
Samuel refuses to sit down to eat until the boy arrives. When David walks in, God says, this is the one. He is anointed in front of the brothers who had been presented ahead of him, and the Spirit of the Lord comes on him from that day on.
It cuts both ways. If you have been overlooked, the people who left you in the field do not have the final say on what you are worth or what God might do with you. And if you are quick to rank people by appearance and polish, Samuel’s mistake is yours too, and God is willing to correct it.
Today, think of someone in your church, your office, or your family who usually goes unnoticed. Ask them a real question and listen to the whole answer. And if you are the one who feels left in the field, write down one thing God has seen in you that no one else has praised, and thank Him for seeing it.
