The other day I was watching the Nooma video "Rhythm" by Rob Bell, one of my favorite videos in the Nooma series. Rob starts out the video by talking about how he has observed people talking about prayers God has answered in their lives or blessings that people have attributed to God. Things like finding a parking spot near the front of the store or discovering an item that a person wanted had just gone on sale, even a situation where two people had been prayed for for healing and one had indeed gotten better. Rob pointed out that those things seemed a bit trivial to him in light of the immense suffering that goes on around the world and that often our view of God and what it means to be in relationship with him can easily get skewed. In the full context of the video his observation was right on, however I do have one observation.

This last Thursday night (Thanksgiving) Jen, Elijah and I came home from dinner at her parents house. Jen was pretty tired, having a newborn will do this to you, but Elijah just did not want to sleep, in fact it seemed like all he wanted to do was cry, as most newborns tend to do. In our vast experience as parents, I think it was all of 5  days at this point, we had come to realize that if being held and feeding him doesn't quite him down his pacifier usually does the trick. So I went to retrieve his pacifier from his diaper bag, and horror of horrors came to realize that we had left it at Grandma's. Now any good parent worth their weight in salt would have a backup lying around the house, we do, in fact we have no less than 20 different pacifiers of all shapes, colors and sizes, but Elijah in his long life, 5 days, had decided that he only likes this one specific type of pacifier. And so I began the task of attempting to find a store that woudl be open at 9 pm Thanksgiving night, it was either that or drive all the way back to Grandma's house. I wen't to Walgreens, closed. I wen't to Fry's, closed. I went to Albertsons, closed. Finally I made my way to CVS with the realization that if they were closed I would have to make the trek back to Gilbert. Not wanting to do that I prayed a short little prayer, "Lord please let them be open and let them have the right pacifier." Nothing extravagant, but a prayer of desperation none the less. Well lo and behold CVS was open and they did have the right pacifier. As I made my way back home thanking God for yet another answered preyer I recalled what Rob had said in his video. With all of the immense suffering going on in the world, with all of the parents praying in desperation for their children who are dying of Aids or who have no food, why would God bother Himself with something as simple as a pacifier on Thanksgiving? Then the answer hit me. Peter wrote in his first letter "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you." (1 Peter 5.7 NLT). 

We have a tendancy in the West to diminish what we go through because people iin other parts of the world have it so much worse than us. For the most part this is true. I would never equate my search for a pacifier to that of a father looking for food to feed his starving children. I fully understand how blessed I am living in the United States however my problems are still problems. They may only be 1st world problems not 3rd world problems but they are still things that concern me and have an effect on my life in the culture I live in and in this culture they can seem like a big deal. I fully believe that God is concerned just as much about my 1st world problems as he is about 3rd world problems, not because they are equal or one is greater than the other but because "He cares about [me]". 

I hope that we would never feel guilty or foolish to bring our cares and worries before God, just because they may not be as important as someone elses. If they matter to us they matter to God, because He is our father and He does care about us.