Welcome to this daily encouragement from the Our Daily Bread Devotional.

Today's meditation is titled God Sees Us, and it was written by Karen Pimpo.

There are 14 billion trees in the state of Michigan, most of them quite ordinary by most standards.

Yet the state hosts an annual big tree hunt, a contest to identify those trees that are oldest and biggest,

trees that can be honored as a living landmark.

The contest elevates ordinary trees to another level.

Inside any forest could be an award

winner, just waiting to be noticed. Unlike most people, God always notices the ordinary. He cares

about the what and whom that others overlook. God sent a common man named Amos to Israel during

the reign of King Jeroboam. In Amos chapter 7,

Amos exhorted his people to turn from evil and seek justice, but was ostracized and told to be

quiet. Get out, you seer, they said with scorn. Go back to the land of Judah and do your prophesying there.

Amos responded, I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd,

and I also took care of sycamore fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said

to me, go, prophesied to my people Israel.

God knew and noticed Amos when he was just a common shepherd, tending to flocks and trees.

Hundreds of years later, Jesus noticed and called out the ordinary Nathaniel and Zechias near the fig and sycamore trees.

No matter how obscure we feel, he sees us, loves us, and uses us for his purposes.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Amos chapter 7 verses 10 through 17.

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent a message to Jeroboam,

King of Israel. Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel.

The land cannot bear all his words, for this is what Amos is saying.

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