Missing! A man Named Matthew!
Supplementary Reading: Ephesians 1: 1-23
Scripture Emphasis
Matthew 9:9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
In the New Testament, we encounter numerous instances where personal narratives become memorialised by some inanimate object. One such instance is Matthew’s account of his own eventual apostleship. A tax booth, usually manned by Matthew, was inexplicably vacant as far as the residents of Capernaum knew!; “Missing! A Tax Collector named Matthew”.
“It sounds suspicious,” mused the self-appointed guardians of public morals.
” It demands an immediate investigation”!
And investigate, they did!
Were there rumours of Matthew’s
dissatisfaction with his employment as the collector of Roman taxes in Capernaum? Those investigating Matthew’s strange disappearance questioned his closest friends, of whom there were few. But none had any such information to offer. Yet, few people in Capernaum kept silent upon hearing his name. There was a glint of suspicion conveyed from the eyes of the kindest and most generous citizens! It seemed even to Matthew that his fate was to spend his life in Capernaum with the damning suspicion that was engulfing the community like molten lava! What capacity could any human have to withstand the cruel onslaught against all his dreams while being a tax collector for the despised Romans?
However, the vacant tax booth was a living symbol of sleepless nights, scalding tears, haunting dreams, and trembling promises—but for Matthew, it was also God’s knocking time!
Dawn broke in the eastern sky as Matthew began executing last night’s promising resolve. He would put himself in the place where the seeking shepherd would most likely look to find His lost sheep named Matthew.
I do not know
“how deep were the waters crossed
or how dark was the night that the Lord passed through, ere he found His sheep that was lost”. (2)
I only know that find His sheep, He did.
I imagine God’s long-awaited occurrence of Matthew’s apostleship was finally celebrated in Heaven that morning!
God’s plan originated when He breathed into Matthew the breath of life and began preparing and equipping him to fulfil the divine mission of apostleship. Throughout Heaven, the long Amen sounds as the Creator announces, ” Today, Matthew begins his mission for which I chose Him the day I created him: Matthew, Apostle Of Jesus,The Lord.”
In our day, amidst wars and rumours of wars, and the promotion of segregation among nations and, the hateful abuse that destroys the fabric of familiar neighbourhood living and, the deafening silence of those appointees to bring hope and faith into the world, is anathema to the Creator’s ideal of the coming of His Kingdom. At the same time that Matthew appeared on the missing person’s list in Capernaum, in Spirit, Matthew was elsewhere! In Heaven, precisely at the same time, he is the subject of jubilation.
Matthew, the tax collector, finally yields to God’s plan that he become an Apostle of Jesus Christ.
Have you looked lately at God’s possible plan
for your life?
Is God still waiting for you to fill the position for which you were born? One may not have to vacate one’s present occupation. You may successfully discharge both callings! But that decision is best made in the Presence of Jesus Christ, just between the two of you! ( see Ephesians 1: 3 – 11)
Hymn: I Feel The Winds Of God Today
https://youtu.be/kaQoC_VW8YE?si=e7O13uc3ekAyQRG6
Prayer To Follow This Meditation
“My times are in Your hands, my God. I will them there.”
There can be no greater desire than that in this world; to awaken each morning in the glory of Your dawn, in confidence that Your strength will be proportioned to meet the demands of the hours ahead.
Then, as the day is ending, to see the lights of Heaven shining through the azure dome is to be assured that God is keeping watch over us all. In the days that You will yet grant me, please ‘keep my memory green’ that I will be faithful to remember the specific tasks for which God sent me here to earth.
Then, like Matthew, I will hear from the Lord,
” Well done, good and faithful servant.
“Enter into the joy of thy Lord”. Amen
NOTES
- Scripture references in the text are from the NIV translation of Scriptures.
- Quoted from the hymn titled, ” The Ninety And Nine”. Words by Elizabeth Cecilia Elephantine,1840-1908.
3.The photo is my yielding to a predisposed memory of my childhood days. From this very spot I have felt both an admiration and a profound sadness while watching the sea. The photo is a view of the sea from the ‘wharf’ in Brigus, Conception Bay, Newfoundland.