Have you ever looked at someone without really seeing them?
We do it more than we probably realize. We pass people in the grocery store. We sit across the table from our spouse. We listen to a grandchild tell us a story while our minds are somewhere else. We exchange a few words with the cashier, walk past the person sitting alone, answer a text while thinking about the next thing on our list.
We see people. But do we really see them?
As we’ve been talking about what it means to Walk LIKE Him, I keep coming back to something Jesus did over and over again: Jesus noticed people.
He noticed the ones others overlooked. He stopped for people others considered interruptions. He looked beyond behavior and reputation and saw the person underneath.
Matthew tells us:
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them…”
— Matthew 9:36
There are three words in that passage I don’t want us to rush past: He saw them.
Before the compassion. Before the response. Jesus saw. And maybe becoming more like Jesus begins there.
There is a difference between looking at someone and truly seeing them. Seeing requires something from us. It requires us to slow down. To pay attention. To become curious instead of assuming. To listen instead of preparing our response. To recognize that the person standing in front of us has a story we may know nothing about.
My sister Sara understood this beautifully. Years ago, she wrote a blog post called Be Intentional. She believed that even the smallest interactions carried an impact. She wrote:
“If I come in contact with someone I either leave them feeling better about themselves or worse, but I never leave them unaffected.”
That thought has stayed with me, because we don’t usually think of our ordinary interactions as significant. A smile. A conversation. A text. A compliment. Stopping long enough to listen. Remembering something someone told us last week.
But Sara understood that those little moments matter. She wrote that her goal was to leave the people she encountered knowing they were special and that someone cared.
Isn’t that so much like Jesus?
Sara shared a childhood memory in that post that I love. She remembered sitting at the dining room table while our mom was vacuuming. At some point, Mom stopped what she was doing, sat down beside Sara, and helped her practice writing her name until she got it. That’s it. No grand gesture. No carefully planned life lesson. A mother stopped vacuuming and sat beside her little girl. And decades later, Sara still remembered how it made her feel.
Why? Because in that moment, Mom communicated something without ever needing to say it: You are worth stopping for.
I wonder how many opportunities like that pass through our days. Someone starts telling us something while we’re looking at our phone. A child wants to show us something when we’re trying to finish a task. A friend says, “I’m fine,” but something in their voice tells us otherwise. The cashier seems flustered. Someone at church is standing alone. A name comes to mind for seemingly no reason.
And perhaps the question isn’t simply, Did I see them? Maybe it’s: Was I present enough to notice?
See → Care → Respond
When I look at the life of Jesus, I see a pattern that I think can help us.
SEE
Jesus noticed people. Seeing people like Jesus means slowing down enough to recognize the person in front of us. Not their usefulness. Not their inconvenience. Not their politics, appearance, mistakes, status, personality, or reputation. The person. Someone created by God and deeply loved by Him.
CARE
Seeing changes something in us. Matthew 9:36 doesn’t simply say Jesus saw the crowds. It says He had compassion on them. Seeing people like Jesus means asking Him to soften our hearts toward what we see. Instead of thinking, What’s wrong with them? Maybe we begin wondering, What might they be carrying? Instead of assuming we understand someone’s behavior, perhaps we remember that there may be a story underneath it that we cannot see.
Compassion doesn’t require us to know someone’s entire story. It simply requires us to remember that there is one.
RESPOND
This is where intentionality becomes important. Sara wrote about paying attention to those little nudges—the thought to call someone, encourage them, reach out, or do something kind. She believed those nudges might be God’s way of showing her where she was needed. I love that.
Because sometimes we notice—and then keep moving. We think: I should text her. I should ask him how he’s really doing. I should tell her what I appreciate about her. I should sit down and listen. I should pray for them. And then life gets busy.
Seeing people like Jesus means learning to respond when the Spirit nudges.
It doesn’t always require something big.
Sometimes love looks like stopping the vacuum cleaner and sitting down at the table.
There’s another part of Sara’s post I appreciate because it’s real.
She admitted:
“I drop the ball on it all the time… I mess up with the best of them.”
Me too. There are times I’m distracted. Times I’m too focused on my own agenda. Times I realize later that someone needed something from me and I missed it. Walking like Jesus doesn’t mean we’re suddenly going to notice every need and respond perfectly every time. We’re learning. We’re practicing. We’re becoming.
And when we realize we’ve missed an opportunity, we don’t have to stay stuck in guilt. We simply begin again. Jesus, help me see.
Last week we talked about the fruit of the Spirit. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. We said that fruit isn’t something we manufacture. It’s evidence of Who we’re connected to.
But here’s something else I’ve been thinking about: Fruit has somewhere to go.
Love gets expressed toward someone. Patience gets practiced with someone. Kindness gets offered to someone. Gentleness changes the way we speak to someone.
The fruit growing within us eventually becomes visible in the way we treat the people around us. That’s why this week’s conversation matters so much. Walking LIKE Jesus isn’t simply about becoming a nicer version of ourselves. It’s allowing our relationship with Jesus to change the way we see people.
Sara spent much of her life homebound. Her world became incredibly small in some ways. She couldn’t go to work. She couldn’t travel. Eventually, she couldn’t even leave her home. And yet she refused to believe that meant her life couldn’t have an impact. She paid attention. She encouraged. She listened. She wrote. She noticed people.
She once described encouragement as one of the biggest roles of her life—believing in people when they struggled to believe in themselves and reminding them that they mattered.
Her circumstances limited where she could go. They did not limit her ability to see people. Maybe that’s something all of us need to remember. We don’t need a platform. We don’t need a ministry. We don’t need more time. We don’t need the perfect words. We simply need to pay attention to the person God has placed in front of us. Because you may never know how long someone remembers the moment you made them feel seen.
So this week, maybe our prayer is simply: Jesus, help me see people the way You do. Help me slow down enough to notice. Help me see beyond what is obvious. Give me compassion for what I don’t understand. And when You nudge my heart, give me the courage to respond. Today, help me notice the person You have placed in front of me.
Help me see. Help me care. Help me respond.
And through something as simple as my attention, my words, or my presence…help them experience a little more of You.
With love and joy,
Laura
Choose Joy Adventure
Adventure Awaits…will you choose joy?
Leave a Reply