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Good morning.  It was last year that George Martin the famous record producer died, but on this day in 1962 that he first met up with the Beatles at the Abbey Road studios in London, a meeting which would change the lives of all those involved and arguably the future of popular music.  According to his own later account, the meeting didn’t start too well. He apparently wasn’t that impressed by the quality of the Beatles’ instruments or by the ability of their then drummer. For their part, the Beatles weren’t quite sure what to make of this man who didn’t seem to get their sound and indeed was more used to producing classical music.

Yet there was something about the Beatles and their sheer charisma and camaraderie which got through to Martin. He saw something in them, decided that they had ‘the potential to make a hit record’ – and offered them a recording deal. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Their meeting is a story about recognising and encouraging potential – and that’s a theme which runs right through the Bible, from the story of Joseph and his brothers, to the anointing of the shepherd boy David as King, to Jesus’ choice of his disciples. These stories speak of God’s ability to see the potential in people which other folk don’t initially recognise; for, as the prophet Samuel says; ‘Human beings look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart’. But more than that, these stories challenge us to do the same; that is to see the people around us not just as they are but as the persons who, by the grace of God and a little encouragement from us, they could become.

Almighty God, Your insights are so often clearer than ours; help us not to be put off by outward appearances but to look deeper in to the heart, so that we may see and encourage the potential in others; for Christ’s sake, Amen.