Small things matter

Apologies to friends and passersby for not posting for a while. My lame excuse is busyness. Ironically I’m at the peak of that busyness now – tying up loose ends at work while preparing to go to Iraq on Friday – and yet for some reason I felt the urge to blog. Maybe it’s a moment of calm in the centre of the Hurricane, as friends over in the US recently experienced.

Things are beginning to come together for the Iraq trip. I’ve got a pile of phone numbers for people in Baghdad, but often one dials 10 times without getting a connection, because the tiny network over there is really overstretched. But I have got through to some lovely people who’ve agreed to meet me at the airport, put me up and guide me around. I suspect the trip (consulting Iraqis on their views on the debt for Jubilee Iraq) is going to require a lot of patience, probably knocking on lots of doors and waiting for hours to meet people. That will be quite a change from the hectic pitch of London life, which might actually be refreshing, though I suspect I’ll be fighting frustration. Please do pray that I have wisdom and tact, and make maximum use of the little time I have in Iraq.

Anyhow, what I really wanted to talk about in this post is: what is important? That’s a pretty huge and vague question, but I’ve been thinking about it because of a fairly mundane experience. We need a little background to set the scene for this. I rent a room in a quite an unusual flat in London. My landlord and flatmate, Paedar, is a elderly man who has struggled with mental illness – schizophrenia and depression principally – for much of his life. I’d expected that living with Paedar would be quite emotionally draining and would involve quite a lot of giving on my part, and it can be like that sometimes. But actually I’ve received a lot of support in return from him, and learnt some quite profound lessons.

Paedar likes to pray together regularly, which is good in itself as I’m often rushing around and forget to put aside “quality” time for God. We have very different concerns. As you can guess by now, I’m very focused on Iraq, and so there are things such as the dreadful bombing outside the Iman Ali mosque in Najaf, or a forthcoming Jubilee Iraq meeting with the British Treasury on my mind. Paedar’s concerns are more mundane. He finds it a great effort to do many of the simple chores of life, and can get very worried about them. So he might ask me to pray about the plumber coming around to fix a dripping tap, or that he’s able to arrange dinner with a friend tomorrow night. Sometimes I fight to keep a straight face because the requests can seem ludicrous, for example yesterday he asked me to pray that he remembers to pay a cheque for the electricity bill tomorrow (when the bill only arrived today, and he really has weeks to pay it, and he has no problem with money because of a large inheritance).

However, on reflection, Paedar’s concerns are not so ludicrous. In particular they are not ludicrous to God, and so they should be ludicrous to me. What I have learnt profoundly from Paedar is that God cares deeply about the smallest detail of our lives as well as issues of global significance. Jesus told his disciples “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” and King David sang “Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.”

God loves us so deeply that he is concerned about anything which concerns us, even unnecessairies worries about an electricity bill. Human beings have to prioritise their concerns, because we are finite beings. But God is infinite and able to know, care and respond to a car bombing at Najaf while at the same time comforting Paedar in his worries about his daily routine. We need never be embarrased to bring a concern to God because we think it too small.