“Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”                                                                                                           (I Samuel 16:7b)

Ladies, have you ever been barely out of bed and had a man come into your bedroom accompanied by twenty-five children? That’s what happened to me the other day,  in a Twenty-first Century sort of way…
I had been up for a while and done a few things, but those did not yet include washing my face, putting on makeup, combing my hair, or getting dressed. At that hour of the morning I looked like something that had crawled out from under a rock, but who cared? Nobody was coming over, and Marty was working in the basement.
The ringer of my cell phone was still turned off, but I heard a vibration and looked to see who it was. I was a little surprised to see the name of Joseph Nsereko, a man in Uganda who runs an orphanage I support. How did he get my number? I wondered.
I wasn’t going to answer it. Part of me thought, I haven’t prayed yet this morning, and I don’t want to get sidetracked already. But another small voice said, Hey, how often do you get to talk to someone in Uganda? The second voice won out, and I answered it, holding the phone up to my ear.
“Hello?” I said.
“Miss Annie!” Came a cheerful voice with a delightful African accent. I could hear the voices of little children in the background. Aww… I thought. How precious! This is going to be fun…
“Miss Annie, we can’t see you!”
Can’t see me? I thought, confused. Without thinking, I looked at the phone and realized (a split second too late to do anything about it) this was a video chat!
I saw two things on the screen – a smiling African man surrounded by adorable children in the sunshine of a Ugandan afternoon. And I saw another, smaller image in the corner – the face of a disheveled woman, hair a mess, no makeup, Dollar Store glasses perched on her nose.
Several things went through my mind at that moment. The first was how mortified I was. The second was the thought, I hope I’m not scaring any of these children! At the same time I was remembering that I had recently asked the Lord to deal with my vanity. OK, I guess He’s doing that… Dang.
The children didn’t seem frightened, so that was good. Some of them looked a little amused, but oh well. Joseph said “We have been having so much fun with the balls you sent. The children have been playing all day.” Sure enough, a couple of the kids were holding up the soccer balls I had sent, all smiles. I smiled too.
After a few minutes of conversation Joseph said, “We are going to pray now.” OK, I thought, and waited for him to say something. After an awkward pause, I asked, “Are you going to pray, or would you like me to?” As no one was saying anything, I went ahead and prayed for all the children’s needs to be met, and that they would keep having fun playing soccer – enjoying exercise, fresh air, and fun, and learning teamwork and sportsmanship. Joseph thanked me again, and as we said goodbye, he said “We love you!” and I’m sure I heard some smaller voices echoing, “WE LOVE YOU!”
I hung up and sighed. Oh well, I thought as I looked in the mirror and cringed. Thanks, God, You are dealing with my vanity. – Then I quickly “did my face,” brushed my hair, and changed from my ratty pajamas into something nicer. I checked the mirror and thought, Now I look almost human. (I guess He’s still got some work to do.)

Our culture puts so much emphasis on what a person looks like, and the advent of social media and the “selfie” has only made things worse. People, even Christians, can get caught up in the How-do-I-look? mindset, and I’m as guilty as anyone.
But God, Who created our bodies and everything good in them, doesn’t see appearances as the key issue. Most of us are familiar with the words God spoke to Samuel when he had come to anoint the future King of Israel. Now as it turned out, David, a “man after God’s own heart,” happened to be extremely good-looking, too, but if anything, his looks added to his trouble down the road, as he achieved the ancient version of rock-star status.
In contrast, Jesus had this said about Him by the prophet Isaiah:

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53: 2b)

As a First Century Jewish Carpenter, the Lord was apparently a pretty ordinary-looking Man. (Looks can be deceiving!)

It’s now a few days after my early morning surprise video call. My vanity hasn’t been entirely cured. I still wear makeup. – In fact I now make a point of putting it on earlier in the day than I was doing before! But something has blessed me that took a day or two to sink in, and that’s the last thing those dear people said to me: “Good-bye, Miss Annie! We love you!”
They love me!
… They LOVE me! They don’t care that they saw a face they could fertilize their garden with. They just knew, here was a lady in America who cared about them and sent them some soccer balls so they could have some fun.
These kids don’t have tablets or smart phones or video games. If and when there’s food and it’s time to eat, they wave their bowls in the air and cheer, as though someone just scored the winning touchdown. There’s a sweetness and innocence that’s sadly rare in our culture. In them I see the face of God, and through the clamor of the looks-oriented culture of our day, I hear His voice:
It doesn’t matter. I love you.

Prayer: Father, help us to spend less time looking in the mirror, getting the world’s perspective, and more time looking into Your Word, getting Your perspective. We know from Your Word that You love us, as unlovely as we can be. Cleanse us on the inside. Make us beautiful to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your reasonable act of worship.”                                                                                                    Romans 12:1

God’s Word says to surrender ourselves to Him, and most of us know that if we are to live in the will of God, surrender is necessary. So why is it so hard to do? Does our concept of surrender come from watching movies and TV shows about war and crime-fighting? Is there another way to look at surrender – God’s way? I wrote about this in my book BARRIERS (So, if prayers are so powerful, how come mine don’t get answered?):

“Some of us have a problem with the word ‘surrender.’ The reason is probably that we’re thinking of the kind of surrender that happens on the battlefield, where a beaten, bloody, half-dead soldier has no choice but to give himself up to his enemy. But that is only one kind of surrender.
“Would it help instead to think of the surrender that a bride gives her bridegroom on her wedding night? Depending on one’s attitude, surrender can be an indescribably joyous act of the will, and the peace it brings is beyond anything the world or its treasures have to offer.”          (BARRIERS, Chapter Fifteen)

 

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, help us to see You as our loving Bridegroom, Who deserves all that we have, and so much more. Let us daily offer ourselves to You as living sacrifices, in joyful self-abandon. We want to be one with You and Your purposes,  in Your precious name.  Amen

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”  James 14b (NIV)

“Forever” is a word we have heard all our lives, and if you’re like me, you have a vague idea of its meaning “a long, long, LONG time.” It makes sense that since “forever” is much, much longer than this life, we should be more focused on things that matter eternally and less focused on temporary things.

But are we? It seems as we hit the ground running each morning, those “temporary things” gobble up our time for “just a minute,” an hour here, a half hour there, interruptions, interruptions to the interruptions, and before we know it the day is over – perhaps with numerous regrets – and we realize that we haven’t even taken the time to connect with God. If we had – and if we had done it early on – perhaps we would have had His perspective on our day. Who knows in how many ways that day may have turned out differently?

Although the concept of eternity is beyond our comprehension in this life, I want to share with you one way in which I caught a glimpse of it – probably as closely as I will ever come to grasping it without having my head explode.

I was on my way to church to teach a Sunday school class on my book BARRIERS. It was the Sunday we were examining the barrier of wrong priorities. Before I left the house I had a sudden inspiration. I grabbed a jar, and on the way to church I stopped at the public beach and scooped up some sand.

When I entered the classroom, I set the jar on the podium as people filed in. As we were discussing the things we tend to pay attention to and fill our time with and obsess about, I took a single grain of sand out of the jar. I held it up on the tip of my finger, although I was sure most of the people couldn’t see it. We talked about how small that grain of sand was, compared with all the sand in the jar. Then we considered how much smaller it was when compared with the sand on the beach where I had picked it up.

“Now,” I continued, “imagine this grain of sand compared with the sum total of all the sand in the world – beaches, sand dunes, Sahara Desert, bottom of the ocean…” I paused, as we all took in the mind-boggling concept. “And yet, this grain of sand, compared with all the sand on the planet, is still more than the sum of our lives compared with eternity.” I let the thought sink in a moment.

“Now, what was it you were worrying about?”  A few chuckles rippled through the class.

PRAYER: Father, let 2018 be the year we gain Your perspective. Help us to keep our minds set on what You desire from us and to live our lives in the light of eternity, in Jesus’ Name.

 

 

 

    “Now we see but a poor reflection…” (I Corinthians 13:12a)

We can get in trouble relying on our own flawed perspective. In Scripture we are told “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) When we learn to think the way God does rather than the way the world thinks, we will be transformed.
Welcome to “Seeking God’s Perspective.” Enjoy the journey.