When run by user everything is ok, when run through cron either line_first and line_last are empty

cron_test.sh

#!/bin/bash

STATUS_DIR=~/status

# save (to file) paths to all the files in STATUS_DIR directory
ls -d -1 $STATUS_DIR/*.* > "$STATUS_DIR/files"

# read (from file) paths one by one and process the files
while read -r line
do
	line_first=$(head -n 1 "$line")
	line_last=$(tail -n 1 "$line")
	echo "$line_first"
	echo "$line_last"
done < "$STATUS_DIR/files"