Reflection
God keeps choosing wrong.
At least that’s what makes sense if you’re Samuel, staring at Jesse’s impressive lineup of sons. Strong. Capable. Battle-tested. Obviously qualified. But God isn’t shopping for a warrior; God is shopping for a heart. And here’s the thing that should terrify us: if the prophet himself couldn’t see what God was looking for, what are we missing?
The Pharisees had the same problem. They saw hungry disciples violating Sabbath law. Jesus saw human beings who needed to eat. Same scene, completely different movies playing in their heads. One group counted violations; the other counted people.
We love our sorting systems. Our metrics. Our boxes that separate the qualified from the disqualified, the worthy from the unworthy, the sacred from the profane. We build elaborate theological frameworks to explain why this matters and that doesn’t.
Then God shows up and picks the shepherd boy. Then Jesus shows up and says the rules were made for people, not people for the rules.
Here’s what haunts me about these readings: they suggest God is chronically unimpressed by the very things we use to impress God. Our credentials, our religious precision, our ability to follow the script, God keeps looking past all of it, searching for something else entirely. Something we might be systematically trained not to see.
David wasn’t chosen despite being overlooked. His being overlooked was evidence that human eyes can’t see what matters most.
What if the people and needs we’re most practiced at overlooking are precisely where God’s gaze is fixed?
