It was so tiny it didn’t even register on the Richter scale of my life. This little need, this ticklish, gnawing desire would wave it’s arms in front of my face every now and then, demanding attention only to be pushed aside by more important issues like wondering if I had enough tooth flossers until my next grocery run.

This little thing never went away and if I allowed my thoughts to linger over it, I was sad. I had been thinking about it for so long.

I wanted to join a writer’s group

I realize that some of you are laughing right now, maybe you thought this was going to be a deathbed-esqe confession of deeply hidden sin. Sorry, not today.

I have been yearning for a group of writers who would understand my angst, idiosyncrasies and fears around writing. A peer group I could trust to provide valuable feedback and I would do the same for them. People who intimately understood the elusive chase of finding perfect pens and beautiful notebooks.

Writing is so solitary. It feels like cultivating a quarter of land with a garden hoe. It’s mostly staring off into space trying to envision what it is you want to say; there’s a lot of hand-wringing. It’s a lot of coffee, water, potty breaks, snack breaks and email checks; sometimes you might actually write. A single word can have you stuck for hours because it doesn’t quite fit. It’s lonely.

And so once in awhile quiet whispers would bring the need to Jesus, more of a clench in my throat than a formal request. It seemed too inconsequential to speak aloud. It was such a little thing.

I’ll bet you have those whispers too. Little things that you feel deeply about but can’t spend too much time mulling over because they don’t matter as much as…say…diapers for the baby or food in your fridge. Maybe you have little things that you feel no one understands and you’ve never prayed about them because bringing them before a Holy God seems to trivialize his time and you’ve never believed he cares about little things.

He does

He cares about every little thing.

You see, all things are little to him because he is God With Us, Prince of Peace, Immanuel. Is his arm too short to reach into our circumstance or his love not quite enough to encompass us? Is his Holy Spirit too far away to comfort us? No.

Birds of the air, flowers in the field. Lost coins, lost sheep, wayward sons & daughters. People who have been sick all their lives. Little children. Widows. The poor. Heartache, loss; fear, anger. Death and separation. Broken relationships and torn promises. How about lost keys, too much month for your money, messing up.

All of it and more.

He came to this earth as just a little thing. No fanfare. Just the quiet arrival in a cool, damp cave so that he could reveal to humanity that our lives matter to God. Every little thing matters.

Maybe this Christmas season is different for you than any that have come before. Maybe your little things feel really big and you’re struggling because He doesn’t seem to care. This Advent, remember the babe lying in a manger, remember Father God loving you so much and caring about all your little things so deeply that he was willing to sacrifice his one and only Son in order to remove every little sin that separated you from having a relationship with him. His Holy Spirit is in you and as a result, he knows and sees every little thing you are going through and he promises to be with you every moment of every day.

A couple of weeks ago the Lord lead me to a local writing group. It was just a little thing.