The Lord looks at the heart

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. 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
We’ve all heard the saying, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ Usually this means, give it a chance, what’s inside might be better than what it looks like on the outside. But it works the other way too: sometimes the outside might look magnificent, but the inside is sorely lacking.
This is indeed true for literal books, but of course the main application is concerning people. Because we live in the physical world, we tend to form first impressions about somebody based on their physical appearance. Samuel looked at Eliab, Jesse’s oldest son, and saw a tall, attractive man who (in his eyes) would make the perfect king. But Eliab was not the one God had chosen – He had chosen David, the youngest son, because He knew that he had a heart that would seek after God.
So, we can’t see other people’s hearts. In fact, we can’t even see our own hearts, most of the time, unless God reveals it to us (1 Cor. 4:3-4). Here’s a question for each of us: where do we spend our time: on our physical body and appearance, or on our heart? I think it’s obvious which one God would rather have us spend our time on improving.