When I was around 9 years old, we had a miniature dachshund named Romeo that I loved dearly. I don’t really think he loved me that terribly much. But he was very patient with me, as I played with him, dressed him up, and basically tortured him. If any dog, no matter what size, dared to cross our property line, he would run towards it, ferociously barking, and then back away and let our Labrador do the real work of keeping us safe.
For some reason I don’t remember, my parents decided it wasn’t going to work to keep him and they needed to find him a good home somewhere else.
I was heartbroken. He left and we all moved on. But I prayed that he would return. I was 9. I didn’t know that God “doesn’t care” about such things. And so I prayed.
And then came that day, a few months later, when the phone rang. It was the family who had taken him. He was a great dog but some circumstance in their life prevented them from keeping him. They wondered–do we want him back? They wanted to check with us before they found him a different home.
As my mom and dad discussed this at the dinner table, they pondered what they should do. About that time, I piped up in my childish voice, “I have been praying that he would come back!”
At that point what choice did they have?–as my mom laughingly points out when she retells the story. And so, Romeo came back to live with us.
But I think we all learned a lesson that day, even my parents. I had been innocently “casting all my care upon Him” (I Peter 5:7) and He was building the faith of a little child and her family by the unlikely and amazing return of a dog to its previous owners. And when I think back upon that, even all of these years later, I view that event as a building block in the ever-increasing faith and trust in my loving Heavenly Father that has continued to develop over the years.
Do not ever think that God doesn’t care about the little stuff. Oh, we don’t always get what we want and, often, those seemingly unimportant prayers will go unanswered. But every now and then God will give us an answer so clear and so specific that we realize that it could have only been by His intervention and, once again, we are reminded that He knows all and He truly does care.
And so we thank Him for those obvious answers to prayer and realize that He is working, as only He knows how, even when we do not get the answer we want. And we continue to trust and to cast our cares upon Him. How thankful I am that He has shown me how much he cares, not only in my own life, but in the lives of others; not only about the important issues of life, but sometimes about the insignificant “stuff”. If we have put our faith and trust in the God of the Bible and the message within its pages, then we serve a Living God! Praise be to Him.