They Told Me It Was The Wrong Window

Everybody has an opinion about your window.

Your sister looked at it once and made a face. Somebody at work asked which way it faced and then said ah, when you told them. A woman in a shop, years ago, said something about it that you still remember word for word.

And you have accepted all of it. Not because you are suggestible. Because they sounded certain and you were not, and certainty is very persuasive when it arrives from outside.

So the window has been established as the wrong one. You have said it yourself since, out loud, to other people. It is not a good window.

And here is what I want to ask, and it is not rhetorical.

When did you last stand at that glass and look at what it is actually doing?

The Lord looketh on the heart

Samuel is sent to anoint a king, and the first thing that happens is that he gets it wrong in an entirely reasonable way.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

For man looketh on the outward appearance.

You are being warned about a way of assessing that is quick and confident and often wrong, and no glance at your window has ever once been able to see what it actually does. 1 Samuel 16:7 says man looketh on the outward appearance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has been told about her own room.

Notice that Samuel was not being careless. He was a prophet, and he looked at a tall impressive young man and drew the obvious conclusion.

The problem was not his judgment. It was that the outward appearance is genuinely all that a quick look supplies, and a quick look is what everybody gives everything.

Your sister looked at your window for four seconds. The man at work never saw it at all and answered a question about a compass point. The woman in the shop had a rule she applied to everybody.

You have collected four second verdicts and held them as findings, and a rule somebody applies to everybody has never once been a reading of your room. The Spirit of God is what makes that distinction usable, and 1 Samuel 16 is where the outward appearance is written down.

What a compass point does not tell you

Now the practical half, and there is a real fact in it.

The direction a window faces tells you almost nothing on its own.

What actually determines the light in a room is what is outside it, how high it is, how big the glass is, what color the walls are, and whether anything is hanging in front of it. A window facing the supposedly wrong way with nothing outside it and a pale wall opposite can carry more usable light than a supposedly good one with a tree and a dark room behind it.

The compass point is the only part of that anybody can assess in four seconds, which is exactly why it is the part everybody comments on.

You have been given the one variable that is easiest to say out loud, and the easiest thing to assess has never once been the thing that decides it. What is written in 1 Samuel 16:7 refuses the outward measurement, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands a woman back her own instrument.

And there is one more thing worth knowing, because it will change how you hear these comments in future.

People talk about windows the way they talk about weather. It is conversational. Almost nobody saying that about your window was making a considered statement, and if you asked them about it now, most of them would not remember saying it.

You have been carrying, for years, remarks that the people who made them forgot within the hour.

You are carrying sentences nobody else has kept, and an offhand remark has never once been the authority you have been treating it as. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman put those down without falling out with anybody, and 1 Samuel 16 is the ground under it.

Go and look

So the instruction is not to argue with anybody. It is to go and get a reading of your own.

Stand at that window three times today. Morning, the middle of the day, and late afternoon.

Each time, stand right at the glass and look at what is happening. Is there a shadow on the sill or not. Can you read small print standing there. Does the light change when a cloud goes over, which means it is direct, or does it stay the same, which means it is diffuse.

Three minutes in total across the whole day.

You are able to gather more in three minutes than nine years of remarks ever gave you, and your own eyes at your own glass have never once been the unreliable instrument here. 1 Samuel 16:7 refuses the outward look, and the Spirit of God is the one who hands a woman her own judgment back.

That is more real information about your window than every remark anybody has ever made about it combined, and it is yours, and nobody can take it off you with a face.

You are able to get a true reading in three minutes, and standing at your own glass has never once been less reliable than a stranger's opinion. 1 Samuel 16:7 says the LORD seeth not as man seeth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who stands at the window with a woman getting her own answer.