“Does God care about my sick goldfish?” my six-year-old daughter asked.
Her question made me pause. I don’t really care about the goldfish. Why would God? Then I noticed a tear begin its long, slow trek down my little girl’s cheek. Because I cared for her, suddenly I cared for the stupid goldfish.
God is like that. Because He cares for you, He cares about what you care about.
As part of Elijah’s bedtime routine, we each share something we want to pray about, then we say a short prayer together. Often, Elijah wants to tell God about something that’s on his mind- his new toy, or something exciting that happened to him that day. At first I was hesitant to pray about these things. Shouldn’t we be teaching him how to pray, how to tell God what he’s concerned about or what he wants or what he needs? Then one day it hit me. It's okay to talk to God about that stuff. Prayer isn’t about asking for things all the time. For Elijah, the thing he’s excited about may be his toy garbage truck, or Buzz Lightyear, or a really cool pair of Spiderman shoes. For an adult it may be something else. Or, hey, it may be a cool pair of Spiderman shoes, I don’t know. The point is, if something is important to us, if we’re worried or excited about something, it isn’t too trivial for God to care about.
Sometimes Elijah gets very excited or very upset over something that, in my adult eyes, seems trivial or nonsensical. One of the most important lessons I have learned as a parent is that it doesn’t matter how it appears to me; Elijah’s feelings about it are real, strong, and deserve to be taken seriously. So when he is overjoyed at the dandelions growing in the front yard, I am happy with him. Looking at it from his perspective, they are a nice bright color, they show that spring is here, and sometimes they have really cool white seeds that you can blow all over the yard. And when he is crying heartbroken tears because his favorite pair of shoes is too small, I am sad with him. Because from his perspective, he is losing something he really loved and that was a part of his everyday life.
I think God sees us the same way. I don’t think we should worry about whether our requests are too silly or trivial for God to care about. Does he care about really major, huge issues? Absolutely. But I firmly believe he also cares about the “small stuff” because he loves us and he sees how important those things are to us.
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