The words filled the air but that mother's heart was NOT right.. somebody did care!

I had been walking to my car when I heard the mother's voice ring out into the air waves.  I have no idea of what her day had been like or what was happening between her and her son.  But I heard the words, ever so clearly, and while it has been weeks since that moment I have not forgotten them.

"Nobody cares."  Those were the two words that have now branded that mom and that moment upon my heart, I think indefinitely.


Now I don't know what it was that she was telling her son that nobody cared about, but something in those words hit my heart and I began praying.  Praying that that little boy wouldn't receive the lie that "nobody cares."  In that moment a total stranger had overheard those words and since then have not been able to shake that moment away from my heart.  Do I care?  Do I care about a little boy who I have never met, will never meet, and have no idea at all what had transpired?  Do I really care about some stranger's heart in the parking lot of a supermarket?


I have spent so much time thinking about that mom and her little boy that I would think the answer to those questions is YES!  I care... I have spent more time praying for that mom and that little boy then I have prayed about a variety of other things.  So I must care on some degree... God has been and is birthing something in me and in walking out moments since that one in the parking lot I have done a lot of thinking about those statements that are made haphazardly and that aren't actually true.. BUT are so believed by so MANY!


The statements:


Nobody cares


It doesn't matter anyway


I'm fine


There is no point


They go on and on from there and some travel down a road where those thoughts only get worse and worse and despair and despondency take a hold.


In my walking out writing this blog I have realized time after time new levels of transparency, disclosure, vulnerability... But what I have learned more than anything is that there is soooo much more that we all have in common with one another than we don't.  Sounds cliche right.  Oh well... It's true!

We might mask things differently, package them differently, speak them differently.. but within that
 which operates inside a human heart there is the same desire and same needs and same longings.


For my friend who wrote the guest blog post I had kept hearing the phrase.. "What happens when all falls silent?"  What then... Her blog post was beautiful and amazing, just like her...  But that is something we all face...  The silence, the moments of being alone during an hour when we wish we had a friend to just sit with us, the thoughts of insignificance, all those moments and more fill out everyone's life at one time or another.

I'm realizing just how much God cares.. just how much God knows... just how much it all matters to God... Not in an ethereal way either..  He is living and breathing and He is my all and all.  We DO NOT have a high priest who can not sympathize with us.. It is with intimate knowledge that His comfort flows, that His truth pours out.. that His reality brings to bear His compassion and His strength and His might...


Who cares?  Some absolute stranger in the parking lot who never even met you but who has been praying for you for weeks now... Who cares?  The Lord God of Hosts!