Have you ever gone to a restaurant where you saw something on the menu or perhaps saw the dessert display and something looked so scrumptuous that you had to have it so you ordered it. Then you took your fork and put a piece of it in your mouth and disappointment set in because it did not taste nearly good as it looked. It is a great lesson as well as a practical one that things are not always what they appear to be. William Shakespeare put it this way:
“All that glittlers is not gold.”
No matter what wording we use it is true that things are not always as they appear. This idea came to be just now while riding the rails of New England looking at the beautiful communities where things look so neat, nice and orderly. Mind you I said that they looked neat, nice and orderly, but I told myself that things are not always as they appear. And, because this is true, it behooves us to be careful about jumping to conclusions and making decisions based on appearances. Things are not always what they seem to be.
This is true with facebook, instagram, snapchat,; it is true with women, men and churchesbecause everybody has a face. Heh! I never thought about the fact that the word, “surface” has the the word ” face” in it and we do tend to put on faces. So it is a good idea to investigate what is under the face or, you might say, “what is under the surface.”
However, there is the other side of the negative coin, so, be fair about it, sometimes things are better than they sppear. There was a time when I might have discounted a lot of people for a lot of reasons, perhaps it was the bifocals, the less than prestigious job, or any number of other things, but I learned not to do that because those are just faces and many times things are much better than they appear. Did you hear me?
Isaiah said,
“He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53 2-3)
I do not think I need to say anymore. I think we can open the door of the Church on that note, but I will say just one thing more.
“Jesus is better than He appears. Investigate Him for yourself.
Life Step Ministries 