Why did Jesus go to Matthew? Because Jesus knew that Matthew needed Him. Nobody could do for Matthew what Jesus could. Don’t forget that. Matthew had never had a chance. Nobody but Jesus could give him one. He was in a bad setting; his whole life was a tangle; his whole life was knots. Nobody wanted him. And you know people like that. There are some connected with you that you would rather not see. You tremble when you see them and when their name is mentioned. There are some names you do not talk about to others; you try to forget; you won’t talk about them. There is a skeleton in every cupboard. Most of us here have somebody connected with us that we do not like to mention; we try to forget; and yet, God knows, the agony of it eats the life out of us. They are the people who need Him.

It is no good to say to some people, “Believe, believe.” They need somebody’s fingers to unravel the knots, to untie and straighten things out, and who is to do it? Those whose whole life has been cursed from their very birth, they are handicapped in their very blood, and who is to deliver them? Can anybody do it? Is there no God who can do it? Listen-the fingers that weaved the rainbow into a scarf and wrapped it around the shoulders of the dying storm, the fingers that painted the lilybell and threw out the planets, the fingers that were dipped in the mighty sea of eternity and shook out on this old planet, making the ocean to drop and the rivers to stream-the same fingers can take hold on these tangled lives and can make them whole again, for He came to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain. Blessed be God, Jesus can do for Matthew what nobody else can, and He can do for you what your friends cannot do.

-from “As Jesus Passed By” by Gypsy Smith