I See Invisible People

Do you ever try to teach someone something and end up learning yourself?  Do you ever find yourself completely transformed when you thought you were just completing a task?

It happened to me this week.


This week was a short week for us because we had a holiday on Monday and a field trip on Friday.
I had selected 2 books for us to read this week that I thought were completely unrelated to each other.  One was Happy Birthday Martin Luther King and the other was the Invisible Boy.

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King was a book we already owned and I wanted to read it because Monday was the celebration on Dr. Martin's birthday.  




I  also had decided that I wanted to start reading more picture books that dealt with character issues and so I picked The Invisible Boy off of a book list I found on Pinterest.

We borrowed it from the Library but you can buy it here.

It is a story about a boy who feels invisible because he is quiet and so he has no friends.  The boy spends a lot of time with himself until one day a new boy moves to town and they become friends.  It lead to a great discussion:

  1)Have you ever felt invisible and
  2)How can we notice the invisible people?

Its so funny because both books brought about great discussions in our home this week but it wasn't until I sat down to type up the weekly wrap-up this evening did I realize all the lessons that I had learned from these books.

What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did was to fight for a group of people who being treated as invisible.  They and the problems they were facing were pushed to the side and ignored.  Because although many people believed that a social injustice was taking place it was much easier to pretend that the whole thing was invisible.

Because sometimes it is easier to pretend a person is invisible than to take the time to get to know them.

Because sometimes noticing someone-I mean really, truly noticing someone and becoming involved in their life is messy,difficult, and time consuming.

 Because if we start noticing the invisible people around us, the outcasts, those different from us-whether its because of their skin color, gender, how much money they have, what kinds of clothes they wear,where they live, who they married, etc and we start becoming involved in their lives.  We will start eliminating every type of prejudice because we will realize in our hearts we are all pretty much the same.

When we stop looking to fulfill only our own needs but start looking to the needs of others around us and  when we stop ignoring problems in the world and pretending the problems are invisible but deciding to be the change-that is when real change happens.

I want to be the person who sees invisible people.  I want my children to see the invisible people.

Jesus was the ultimate invisible people seer.  He saw the fisherman, the tax collectors, the shepherds, the deaf, the sick, the lame, and even the dead.

He saw the man who was hidden up high in a tree.  Jesus didn't just glance at Zacchaeus and then look away, he didn't wave and smile and then go on his merry way.  He ate dinner with him. He saw him. He saved him.

  9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.


Do you see the invisible people?

I am challenging my kids to look for invisible people in every room they walk into this week.

I am challenging myself to do the same.

I don't want to just read about others who are seeing the invisible people and making a difference in their lives-I want to be the person.

It's funny because I thought that tonight I was just sitting down to write a quick blog post.  A simple weekly wrap up.  But instead I found myself being completely humbled by the topics I was typing about.  I found myself driven to my knees asking God to help me see the invisible people all around me.  Asking God to show me what I can do to let them know they are not invisible to him.

I want to see invisible people.


Will you accept the challenge too?  Will you look for the invisible people in your life?  Will you show them the love of Jesus Christ?