"The Sweetness of Seeing"

"The Sweetness of Seeing"

The knock came at 9:47 PM-Jim knew because he'd been watching the kitchen clock, waiting for his sourdough starter to bubble. Three sharp raps, hesitant but desperate.

He found a kid on his porch, sixteen, soaked to the bone and clutching a McDonald's bag like a lifeline. Hollow cheeks, shoes held together with duct tape, eyes that had seen too much too young.

"You Jim?" the boy asked, teeth chattering. "Lady at the shelter said you... help people."

Jim had been helping people for twenty-three years ever since he'd returned from overseas with hands that shook and a heart full of holes. Baking had saved him then. Now it has saved others.

"I'm Jim. You hungry?"

The boy, Liam nodded, and Jim stepped aside.

Within minutes, Liam was perched on a kitchen stool, wrapped in Jim's old flannel, watching flour transform into biscuits. The silence wasn't uncomfortable; it was necessary. Jim had learned that broken people needed space to breathe before they could speak.

"Ran away three weeks ago," Liam finally said, accepting a warm biscuit. "Foster dad..." He didn't finish. Didn't need to.

Jim just kept kneading. He'd heard variations of this story dozens of times kids aging out of the system, throwaways, runners. Society's invisible ones.

"Got anywhere to sleep tonight?" Jim asked.

"Bus station, maybe." Liam's voice was small.

"Couch folds out."

That first night stretched into three days, then a week. Liam helped with dishes, learned to separate eggs, slowly opened. He'd been in seven foster homes. Aged out at eighteen with nowhere to go. Been living rough for months.

"Sometimes I wonder if anyone would notice if I just... disappeared," Liam said one morning, mixing pancake batter.

Jim paused, remembering his own dark thoughts years ago in that field hospital tent, surrounded by suffering he couldn't fix. That's when his chaplain had shared Lamentations 3, verses that had saved his life.

He grabbed his worn Bible from the windowsill and flipped to the familiar passage. "Read this," he said gently.

Liam read aloud, stumbling over some words: "To deny people their rights before the Highest... would not the Lord see such things?... You, Lord, accepted my case; you redeemed my life."

"God sees you, Liam, my son. Even when the world pretends you don't exist, God sees you darling lad." Something shifted in the boy's face. A crack in the wall he'd built around his heart.

Six months later, Liam was enrolled in community college and working part-time at Jim's new bakery- “Loaves & Light”, a small storefront that had become an unofficial safe haven for kids with nowhere else to go. The apartment above the shop housed three young people getting back on their feet.

"Why'd you, do it?" Liam asked one evening as they closed. "Take me in, I mean. You didn't know me."

Jim smiled, remembering that rain-soaked kid on his porch. "Someone saw me once when I was invisible. Figured I should pass it on."

Reflection

Going over Jim’s story I began to think how in our hurried world, it's easy to overlook the Liams around us-the homeless veteran on the corner, the aging neighbour who hasn't had a visitor in months, the coworker eating lunch alone every day. But God's heart breaks for the invisible ones, and He calls us to be His hands and feet.

Jim's ministry wasn't complicated. No seminary degree required. Just flour, butter, an open door, and eyes willing to see what others missed. Sometimes the most profound act of faith is simply noticing someone exists.

The God who saw Jeremiah's tears still sees ours and many others today. He sees the runaway, the forgotten, the abandoned. And sometimes, just sometimes-He uses ordinary people with extraordinary compassion to remind them they matter the most.

Who in your world might be feeling invisible today? How might God be calling you to "see" them?

Why Loaves & Light-?

Loaves & Light

• Inspired by the miracle of the loaves and fishes and being a light to others.

• Conveys both nourishment and divine compassion.