Overlooked

When David Mazurek bought a farm in Michigan in the late 1980s, it came with some extras thrown in. The old farmer left a few pieces of equipment in the barn, a mix of useful and useless things. One item was an odd-looking 23-pound rock that was used to keep a barn door open. Mazurek took little notice of it until recently. After seeing news reports about meteorites, he sent the rock off to be tested. It turns out that the doorstop is worth about 100,000 CHF. It’s a rare specimen of meteorite that researchers would love to get their hands on.
It makes you wonder how often we overlook valuable items that might be sitting right under our noses. How much more often do we overlook the value of people who are part of our daily lives? Each day, we interact with some individuals on a limited basis. We might tend to think of them like a doorstopper – just a placeholder for our activities. These people might be a cashier in the grocery store or a delivery man at work. Each person we come across has a story and is of priceless value to a loving heavenly Father.
In Matthew 12, the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a question about healing on the Sabbath. Jesus replied that if one of their sheep fell in a hole on the Sabbath, they would rescue it. He asked, “And how much more valuable is a person than a sheep?” Then he healed a man with a withered hand. (Matthew 12:12)
The Pharisees had failed to see the value of the man. They simply saw a problem or tricky legal situation that would be a good test case. Jesus looked beyond that. He saw something more. He saw the man who had been cast aside from society due to his deformity. Jesus loved him and healed him.
We can quickly see people as placeholders or problems who play a minor role in our existence. It’s easy to write them off as unimportant. For followers of Jesus, people are made in the image of God and are therefore valuable to our Father in heaven. Those people around you every day? Jesus loves them and died for them. Don’t overlook them.