God Is Not Indifferent
I wet the washcloth with cold water, wrung it out, and wiped my granddaughter’s blistering hot forehead, praying all the while. A raging fever, throbbing headache, and sore throat – none of these were in our slumber party plans. We had capped off a game-playing movie-watching popcorn-snacking evening with a little pampering at our homemade spa and turned in some time earlier. By midnight, Carlisle was standing by my bed.
“Keggie, I don’t feel so good.”
(Keggie is my grandmother name. There’s a story behind it, but we’ll save that for another time.)
It’d been hours now since I’d given Carlisle some medicine to try and bring her fever down, and it seemed to be climbing higher instead. I wanted to know just how high, but my digital thermometer was dead. I made a mental note: Pick up an old-fashioned thermometer.
In the meantime, all I knew was that Carlisle’s skin was warming the cold rag as quickly as I could dip it and wring it out, and it was too soon to give her another dose of medicine. I was officially worried and resisting the urge to panic. Should I call and wake her parents? Dip, wring, soothe, repeat. I don’t know how long I stayed at it, but it was too long for my worried heart.
When Carlisle finally began to settle down and her eyelids began to droop, I stretched out beside her, lowered my voice, and continued praying under my breath. I was dozing off myself with more prayer words on my lips when it came. The words didn’t feel like mine, but they carried a holy recognizable weight.
I’m not an orphan. You’re not indifferent.
The words startled me because they were in first person, and although I hadn’t consciously voiced them, they revealed the fear behind my urgent prayers. My shaky faith shamed me even as the words soothed me. I recognized this.
God was offering me the way forward. He was letting me know he was with us. I’ve walked with him long enough to know what to do next.
I began to own those words, only this time I preface them with a confession of my weakness before turning them into an intentional request for his strength. This wasn’t the panic prayers I had been sending up moments before. This was communion, solicited and aided by a faithful Father.
Carlisle’s skin beneath my touch was as hot as it had been moments before, but peace began to stand guard over my heart as I repeated the words, “I’m not an orphan. You’re not indifferent.”
They tasted so good I said them again, and again. And even though her fever raged on, fear and doubt lost their grip there in God’s presence.
I was still processing that prayer the next morning. I wanted my granddaughter to know what had happened in my heart during the night. We were snuggling on the couch when I waded into the discussion.
“This may be too much for you to understand,” I said to Carlisle, “but have you ever totally believed in God until something started happening that you wanted him to stop, and when he didn’t, you began to doubt that he was listening, even though you didn’t want to feel that way?”
To my surprise, Carlisle shook her blond head with enthusiastic agreement. “Yes’m! That happened to me when Weston was sick.”
Would you lean in here and look at God’s great big heart? Carlisle had worried about her little brother recently the same way I had worried about her last night, and our God knew it. He had watched us both!
I told Carlisle how God had reminded me that he was a good Father, even when I couldn’t understand what was happening. Together we found a Scripture verse we could stand on to remember the lesson. John 14:8, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
Carlisle and I took our water paints and a couple of canvases and created some artwork to help us remember what God wants all of us to know:
We are not orphans. He is not indifferent.
I can’t explain the mysteries of God’s timing to a child when I don’t understand them myself. I can’t tell her why the Word tells us to pray about all things at all times when those prayers aren’t all answered in the way we’d like for them to be.
I can tell her we were created for another world where pain will no longer touch us, by a God who loved us so much he was willing to come and share it, to make a way for us to live with him forever.
This is the truth we can all give to each other, over and again, in the good times and the bad. Let’s do it.
is an award-winning Louisiana author and humorist, a popular blogger and speaker, and host of the All Things Southern podcast. Her titles include Suck Your Stomach In and Put Some Color On and Heart Wide Open. Her latest work, Finding Deep & Wide, helps us step away from the exhaustion we feel when we’re living under a spiritual to-do list. By sharing honest, heartfelt, and often hilarious stories of family life in Louisiana, and retelling familiar Bible stories, Shellie helps us see the life Jesus offers us so freely. Connect with her at belleofallthingssouthern.com.
Photograph © Kyle Nieber, used with permission
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