Scripture: Matthew 9:9
There’s a certain kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone—it comes from being unseen.
Maybe you know that feeling. Sitting in a crowded room, yet feeling invisible. Walking through your normal life stuff, same people, same situations, yet wondering if anyone truly knows you.
Maybe it’s the quiet sadness of feeling overlooked at work, dismissed in a relationship, or judged for mistakes. And – the mistakes now seem to define you more than the person you hope to become.
Matthew knew that ache well.
He sat at his tax collector’s booth every day, watching people pass by, their eyes filled with contempt. They saw him, but didn’t really see “him.”
His people, the Hebrew people, saw a traitor, a thief, a man who had chosen profit over people. He wasn’t welcome in their homes.
To the Romans, he was nothing more than a tool of the state—a necessary evil, tolerated but never embraced.
Until Jesus walked by.
And Jesus saw him.
Not just as a tax collector. Not as a man who had made questionable choices. Not as someone past redemption.
Jesus saw Matthew.
The person.
The heart beneath the hardened exterior.
The longing beneath the ledger.
The soul beneath the stigma.
And with two words—”Follow me”—Jesus didn’t just invite Matthew to walk behind him; he invited Matthew to leave behind the identity others had assigned him and discover who he truly was meant to be.
Because that’s what happens when we are truly seen.
So many of us go through life wearing the labels others have placed on us. Failure. Outsider. Unworthy. Not enough. We begin to believe that’s all we are, because that’s all anyone acknowledges. But Jesus sees past all of it. He looks at us with eyes that don’t just recognize who we’ve been, but who we can be.
Maybe today, you feel unseen.
Maybe you feel dismissed, judged, or defined by the worst parts of your story.
Maybe not even the worst parts, maybe just because life is busy for others and they get caught up in their own stuff, and because of that, circumstances beyond your control, you feel unseen.
But Jesus sees you. Not just the version of you that the world critiques or ignores, but the you that is fully known, fully loved, and fully invited into something greater.
Matthew left his booth that day because, for the first time in a long time, he was seen by someone who believed he truly mattered.
In that moment of being fully known and still completely wanted, everything changed.
And the same invitation Jesus gave to him echoes through time to reach you today: Follow me.
Not because of who you’ve been, but because of who you are becoming. Let this be the moment that rewrites your story.
Grace and Peace,
Andrea