Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. Philippians 2:4
His nickname was “Trunk,” because he’d been caught with a trunkful of guns in his car. He was 14 years old.
Arrested just before he carried out his plan for a mass shooting, the young man said, “‘I wanted attention. If somebody would have come up to me and said, ‘You don’t have to do this … we accept you,’ I would have broken down and given up.”[1] But nobody saw the lonely boy.
For 35 years, a disabled man lay on a mat just a few moments’ walk from the Temple. Apparently, no one saw him as they rushed by for decades. But one day, the Bible says, that Jesus did (John 5:6). Jesus saw the man and knew what he needed. “Would you like to get well?” he asked before he healed him. Jesus saw people. Though he was surrounded by crowds, he often paid attention to just a single person. He noticed when a single person touched his clothing (Mark 5:23-34). He sought out the solitary (John 4).
We notice people—but for the wrong reasons. We notice when someone annoys us, when they cut in line, when their appearance doesn’t match our expectations or they don’t speak the same language we do. Our attention is drawn to the things that bother us, not to the person behind them. Scripture is painfully clear on this: “ … take an interest in others,” (Philippians 2:4) it teaches. What does the tired store clerk who snapped at you need? The student who eats alone, head down, every day at school? Or, your bus driver you see each morning? Tonight, before your eyes close, ask yourself: “Who did I see today? And what did I do about it?”
[1] David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (New York: Random House, 2023), chap. 8, “The Epidemic of Blindness,” Kindle edition.
