A friend made a gift for me that I treasure. It’s a small, neatly stained block of wood on which he glued several little pieces of wood. When I show it to people, it puzzles many of them. They see nothing meaningful in this block of wood. Others look at it, and their faces brighten as they “get it.” The little pieces are arranged in such a way that they spell “JESUS.” But you can see the name only if you look at the block a certain way. It reminds me that Jesus can be with us even when we don’t see him.

A missionary colleague in Nigeria helped me to “see” Jesus. As we stood under the hot sun in the middle of Africa, he pointed to the door of the small building where he kept an office and said, “Harvey, sometimes I find it hard to know if it’s Jesus I see at that door.”

No one was there at that moment, but many people had come up to that door, and others would be coming—to ask for help with school fees or hospital bills or transportation costs or other needs. So the question often crossed his mind: Is this a request from Jesus?

It isn’t easy to know. His response? “I would rather make the mistake of thinking this was a request from Jesus, even if it wasn’t—than to think it wasn’t but it was!” He was remembering Jesus’ words in our Scripture reading for today.

Am I willing to look in such a way that I can see Jesus when someone asks for help?