Matthew 10:3

This verse is part of a list of the twelve apostles — the inner circle Jesus personally chose to travel with him and carry his message into the world. These twelve were commissioned with extraordinary authority, yet most of them are nearly unknown to history. Philip and Bartholomew are mentioned together; Thomas would later become famous for his doubts; Matthew — who wrote this Gospel — notes his own past as "the tax collector," a deeply shameful identity in first-century Roman-occupied Israel, where tax collectors were seen as traitors who cheated their own people to serve Rome. Thaddaeus is barely mentioned anywhere in Scripture beyond this list. James son of Alphaeus is similarly obscure. Jesus chose all of them anyway.

God, thank you for choosing ordinary people — for building something eternal out of names the world barely remembers. Help me stop waiting until I'm more impressive or more put-together to show up for you. Use what I actually am. Amen.

Read this list slowly. Bartholomew. Thaddaeus. James son of Alphaeus. These are the disciples history nearly forgot — no dramatic miracles attached to their names, no famous sermons, no mountaintop moments recorded for posterity. They're just names in a lineup. And yet Jesus looked at each of them and said, "You. Come with me." He didn't build his team from the most impressive candidates. He called fishermen, a despised tax collector, a political revolutionary, and people whose names we barely recognize. Matthew includes himself in this list as "the tax collector" — not hiding from his past, but no longer defined by it either. There's something quietly radical in that. If you've spent time feeling like a background character in someone else's more important story — too ordinary, too marked by your history, too unknown to matter — look at this list again. Jesus assembled a team of mostly unremarkable, mostly unfamous people, and through them turned the world inside out. Your name is known to him. That's not a small thing.