Something More

Is God really paying attention to us?

This was my question in high school and college. I grew up believing there was a God. I learned about him and I studied the bible. I was even baptized when I was 13. But as I got older I began to wonder if God was really interested in the details of my life. I believed he created everything and I believed he took care of the sin problem by sending his son. But those seemed to be the only two times he really interacted with Humans directly. OK there were lots of bible stories of God shutting the lions mouths and saving people from fiery furnaces. But those had become bedtime stories and things I remembered along the same lines as sleeping beauty and Cinderella. Nice stories fun to watch or read if I got a nostalgic kick. But I didn't see the relevance in my life.

As I got older life started to get harder. My dad's depression was one thing, but I found girlfriends to get closer to rather than God. My addiction was another thing, but I could white knuckle that one at least for a while. It was when my marriage and wife really crashed, a few years ago, and I had no where else to go I found myself fully in the arms on an intimate and involved God as he carried me through it and brought life back to my family.

Job continues his lament in chap 7. He is still struggling with the concept of being alive and he talks about the fragility of life here. He compares the life of man to the breath the wind, here and then gone. Because of this fragility he will lament and complain while he has breath to do so. His complaint is an interesting one though. Why God are you so mindful of man. Why do you pay so much attention to this fleeting breath which is a single man's life.

Somehow in the midst of all of the hardship Job finds God's mindfulness of man. I think this is true. It is interesting to me, when life gets harder some how we become more mindful of God's watchfulness. Perhaps it is because in these times we cry out to him more, because the circumstances of our lives are more than we can handle. So the truth is he was probably always there we just weren't paying attention as much before.

Scripture tells us that God sees a sparrow fall, how then can he not be watching us? Humanity, the only part of creation made in his own image. He is watching us and even when Job is crying out for death he knows God is watching over him.

May we know today, in the good or in the bad, God is mindful of us. No matter how insignificant we feel in the scheme of life especially in comparison to those around us. God is watching over us.

My personal mission statement is to share with others a God who is real and intimate and who offers us new life in the midst of spiritual warfare. I pray we might come to know this as true and recognize his watchfulness, his mindfulness of us...even today.