To See and to Serve - All Our Daily Bread Daily Devotionals for 2025

Bible in a Year : Psalms 46-48, Acts 28

You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.
Lamentations 3:58

Today's Scripture & Insight : Lamentations 3:31-42, 58-59

“Sometimes in life we see things that we can’t unsee,” Alexander McLean told a 60 Minutes interviewer. The South Londoner was eighteen when he went to Uganda to assist in prison and hospice work. That’s where he saw something he couldn’t unsee—an old man lying helpless next to a toilet. For five days McLean cared for him. Then the man died.

The experience ignited a passion in McLean. He earned his law degree and returned to Africa to help the marginalised. Eventually he founded Justice Defenders, an organisation that advocates for prisoners.

Many people live in conditions we couldn’t ‘unsee’ if we were to see them. But we don’t always see them. In his lament for his devastated homeland, the prophet Jeremiah poured out his heart over his sense of being unseen. “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?” he cried. “Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering?” (Lamentations 1:12).

Jeremiah’s heart ached not only for himself but for all the oppressed as well. “To crush underfoot all prisoners in the land, to deny people their rights . . . would not the Lord see such things?” he asked rhetorically (3:34-36). Yet he saw hope. “No one is cast off by the Lord forever,” he said. “You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life” (vv. 31, 58).

The ‘unseen’ are all around us. God, who has redeemed us, calls us to see and serve them as He enables us.

By: Tim Gustafson

Reflect & Pray
Who are the ‘unseen’ near you? How will you see them? What will you do?

Father, please give me eyes to see people in need and help me show them Your love.