1 Samuel 16:7

Liz Dumain

'The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.' 1 Samuel 16:7

Isn't it great when God surprises us by speaking when we least expect it? Last Sunday I was leading a Children's Church session at my church and we watched a DVD called 'You are Special' by Max Lucado about wooden people called Wemmicks. Each had been carved by Eli, a woodworker. "Every Wemmick was different. Some had big noses, others had large eyes. Some were tall and others were short. Some wore hats, others wore coats. But all were made by the same carver and all lived in the village. And all day, every day, the Wemmicks did the same thing: They gave each other stickers. Each Wemmick had a box of golden star stickers and a box of gray dot stickers. Up and down the streets all over the city, people could be seen sticking stars or dots on one another".

Stars were for things that Wemmicks thought were good - like being beautiful, clever and getting things right, "Some Wemmicks had stars all over them! Every time they got a star it made them feel so good that they did something else and got another star. Others, though, could do little. They got dots". Dots were for those who didn't fit in, who didn't look right.......................

"Punchinello got dots. Everything he tried to do seemed to go wrong, and when it did the others would gather around and give him dots. "He deserves lots of dots," the wooden people would agree with one another. "He's not a good wooden person." After a while Punchinello believed them...........

To cut a long story short, one day he meets Lucia - who doesn't care about stickers - infact nothing sticks to her, which makes Punchinello curious so he asks her why. "It's easy," Lucia replied. "Every day I go see Eli."

After agonising for ages because he was convinced someone as amazing as Eli would never want to see him, Punchinello plucks up the courage to go and see Eli. When he gets there Eli knows his name! He knows everything about him! Eli explains that dots and stars don't matter to him. Punchinello is special because Eli made him.

However badly we feel about ourselves today - we can hang on to the fact that we are special because our 'Eli' - God the creator of the universe, made us, loves us and like Punchinello's Eli 'doesn't make mistakes'.

But there's more............ When Punchinello asks Eli how to make the dots not stick, Eli replies "simply come and see me every day, and let me remind you how much I love you again".

How often does the time we spend with God become about study, preparation, routine, or duty? How different would our lives be if we could simply come to God each day and let Him remind us how much he loves us again?

"May all your dots fall silently to the ground, for if given by man, they matter only to other men" Max Lucado