Does God Care?
By Demiana Salib
Does God really care about me – what coronavirus will do to my life? If coronavirus has put my education or career on hold? One answer to this would be no, salvation is what matters and for as long as I get there, it doesn’t matter how I got there. God only cares about my salvation, true? No, and this is the most insulting line of thought we, as humans, have ever conjured.
I have never really understood the parable of the unjust steward (Matthew 6:26-34) but the final message is nice – “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much,” so I’m generally happy to overlook the parable, but nothing our Lord said can be ignorantly overlooked.
Imagine a servant that devoted so much time and effort into the church. Anything that needed to be done, they could do, and in record time, too. But they would go home completely exhausted to the extent that they didn’t have time to pray. They did good, their actions were good, their intentions were good, but they didn’t have a personal relationship with God.
In unusual circumstances, their services began to be taken away from them. They had nothing left. In their distress, they consulted their father of confession;
“Why isn’t He letting me serve, and I know I need to pray, but I was doing good!”
Their father of confession replied, “He’s not letting you serve until you pray. He loves you very much and you need to see that first, spend this time in prayer.”
Could this servant be our modern day unjust steward? If I continually serve but do not pray, am I wasting my Master’s goods? When God asks me to give an account for my stewardship, how will I answer Him? Will it be, “God I spoke to you daily, you were a part of every aspect of my life.” Or will I struggle to even recognise Him?
Jesus spoke this parable to the Pharisees that judged Him for His love for sinners. For they knew the law, they knew how to appear before the people. They thought they could steal the Kingdom in the same way they fooled the people into believing that they were the most righteous of all men. With the recent closure of many churches worldwide, we are faced with a similar reality check. Is my relationship with God based on a fulfillment of commandments and services of the church, or is there more?
Our relationship with God runs so much deeper than set church services and just doing good. Our modern servant did good, but I can’t even guarantee that my outward display comes close to this. I read this parable and get lost at the unjust steward that went to his master’s debtors and told the one that owed 100 measures of oil to give back 50 and to the one that owed 100 measures of wheat to give back 80. This is not good, it’s deceitful and he’s not getting back what his master was owed. Why does the master commend his shrewdness? I feel like he was just digging his own hole deeper out of desperation.
Instead of reading this as an outsider, I need to read it as if I were the unjust steward. My church has been taken away and I need God, so I need to find another way to love and serve Him. For the unjust steward, the thought of his stewardship being taken away from him was the wake-up call he needed to work and act differently because he could not the face the loss. I will do whatever it takes to give back to my God what He is owed. If I can’t spend time with Him in church, I will try to make up for it at home, even if I think it will not measure up.
It is no longer a matter of, “Does God care?” but “God, I need You to care,” and He does; “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26)
If I think that God does not care about me, that is not a reflection of Him, but a reflection of me. While I am caught up in life, He is still caught up in me, if there is any consolation to coronavirus, it is the time it has forced me to spend with my Beloved. The ones that love you are the ones that gets excited by what makes you excited, the ones that are sad when you are sad, the ones that are happy when you are happy. How could you ever question that your loved ones cared about you? God is greater than these! If I go to work, come home – a standard day, but it is all I can offer in conversation, God wants to hear it, He wants to know how my day went, He cares about all the little things.
Whenever I have thought that God doesn’t care, I can’t recall ever asking Him honestly for His opinion. If my prayers are surrounded on one external factor, He will respond kindly; “My grace is sufficient for you, do not worry.” If it causes sadness, grief, anguish, distress, then He will shift my focus to the eternal. If I want Him just as Saviour from this world that causes me pain, then I won’t see His concern for the little things.
But God starts small, He is faithful in the little, if you want Him as Father, Friend, Biggest Fan, He will be all those things, too. He loves you with an everlasting love and will do anything to have a meaningful relationship with you.
Once we have daily and meaningful conversation with Him, everything is in His Hands without question. And then we can truly say when faced with this larger scale pandemic, “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much.” There may be so many things that are taken away from us, but we will do whatever it takes to keep building our relationship with God and serving those in need. We can’t have big answers to big questions if we don’t start small, start now, even if you feel there is no relationship and you’re starting out of the desperation. He does care and He will continue to work overtime until we see it. To any doubt that God cares about what is happening to our world, He responds,
“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands
– Isaiah 49:15-16.