A month ago Susan Boyle was unknown. A 47 year old from Blackburn, West Lothian Susan lives with her 10 year old cat, Pebbles, having spent much of her adult life caring for mother who died, aged 91, two years ago. She lives in a council house and does voluntary work in her church. She appeared on 11th April on “Britain’s Got Talent” to the derision of the judges and audience. She didn’t look like a star.

By common consent she looked middle aged and frumpy and when she declared that her dream was to sing like Elaine Page the audience looked at her in derision, like the mocking spectators at the Roman Coliseum. It was painful. When asked what had stood in her way she simply pointed out that she had never been given the chance. But now her chance had come.

The rest is history. She sang like an angel. Her commanding but delicate voice instantly melted the hearts of the judges and the audience and within moments there was spontaneous applause. Her performance of “I dreamed a dream” from Les Miserables was compelling and the entire audience gave her an instinctive standing ovation. There have already been over 100 million hits on the website to hear her performance.

It’s a good story … but there’s much more to it than that. Here is a parable for our day which needs to be listened to with the greatest of care. At first, the judges and the audience wanted to write Susan off because she didn’t look right. She didn’t look like a singer. She didn’t look like a star. But in an instant they had to revise their opinion when she shared her gift.

This preoccupation with image isn’t a new idea. When Samuel went in search of a king he was immediately impressed by Jesse’s son Eliab. He looked right, and Samuel, the holy man, concluded that this was the Lord’s anointed. But he wasn’t thinking along God’s lines and he had to learn a very important lesson, “Mortals look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16.7. David wasn’t considered at first because he was the youngest. Indeed his youth so obviously disqualified him that they hadn’t even bothered to bring him in from the fields! But he was God’s man.

It’s very easy for us to get sucked into our society’s conventional ways of thinking – that image is everything. But it isn’t. Indeed image can be profoundly misleading. I’ll never forget the church secretary who told me about the day when the deacons’ meeting in her church were due to meet a prospective minister. He came at the right time and the church secretary went to the door to greet him. Through the frosted window in the front door she saw the shape of the prospective minister, and immediately recognized that the shape (without telling you what it was!) was not in any way the shape that she had in mind for her new minister. But as they spoke, and as he met the church, they recognized that he was God’s choice for their church.

Thinking in God’s way is always a challenge to us, and hopefully the parable of Susan Boyle will remind us of the crucial importance of looking beyond the image.