Because we have so many things to do and often are beset by worry over whether we have done everything we should do, we often tend to want to cut things away from active concern. But as there is so much to do, what can I cut away? Everything can’t be so important.
Theologically, we ask whether God is really concerned with something so small. Why worry about it? Because of the many things competing for our attention, it seems almost necessary to limit the things that we ascribe to God.
As we look at the many things that happen to us each day, the many voices of people, the influences coming from different platforms of media, we have to almost limit God and place Him in houses of worship, objects of sacred art and other specifically religious things.
But the Revelation in Scripture is that everything belongs to God and that He is operative in every way and at every time. Every thought and the slightest movement of our will is so because of the presence of God. He has even given us the power to sin against Him (‘free will’).
While He encourages the good and strengthens the virtuous, He does not abandon sinners, permitting the commission of horrendous acts like the Holocaust in the defense of our freedom to act even when it is disastrous to others and a clear manifestation of evil. He even permits the devils to exist. Nothing can be, except in and through God. Existence is kept operative by the continual Will of God. If for any reason God withdraws His attention from a creature, it would simply vanish from existence without a trace!
Therefore, God is “at work” in literally every one of my thoughts, feelings and actions while making enormous room for my free will to contribute my part to the project of my life and of my future.
While it is amazing enough to consider how much work this involves for God to do this just for my life, it is almost beyond the realm of understanding how He can do this simultaneously with 6 billion people while sustaining the existence of every creature down to the smallest microbe! He is doing this right now as I am writing these words while keeping in existence the rest of this world. And that is just the earth! The universe is a place many times the dimensions of this world. God sustains and sanctifies every being in the universe at every moment of time! How can this be?
This is where we can see clearly how limited we are. We think we are so smart! We think we can grasp what the meaning of “All Knowing” truly is. We have to vastly expand our limited concept of God’s omniscience to be able to grasp how great God is and how small we are!
It is like the insight in the story of St. Augustine walking on the seashore trying to think how he could write an understandable book on the doctrine of the Trinity. As he was walking, he saw a young child with a bucket going to the sea, filling his bucket and carrying the full bucket of water to a hole he made in the sand. Back and forth the child went pouring bucket-loads of water and pouring it into the hole in the sand. Intrigued, St. Augustine asked the child what he was trying to do. The child answered, “I want to put all the waters of the sea into the hole I dug in the sand.” St. Augustine laughed and retorted, “Don’t you know that is impossible! You can’t put the vast ocean in that little hole!” To which the child responded, “It is more possible for me to put the ocean in this hole than for your small mind to understand the Triune God!”
Once you accept the awesome power and intelligence of the Divine Being, you are led to a second unbelievable fact: this Being loves me, likes me, supports me even though I am a single fallible mammal, an erect bi-ped on a tiny planet at a particular era of history. This Being knows every crevice of my skin and every atom of my body. This Being knows my past and sees my future. Every wish, every movement, every desire, every sin, every everything about me is important to this Being we call God!
I am humbled and exhilarated at this thought. And it also applies to you, kind reader. Everything about us is important to God because He loves us, individually and personally!
Everything about us matters to God, because we matter to this mysterious Being we call God!