Does it matter?

It is a fair question to ask, "does God really care if I give something up for Lent?" "Does my devotion matter to God?" You can take these questions further, "Does God care if I go to church?" "If God already knows my thoughts, why do I need to pray?" While those are all fair questions, the answer comes down to a more fundamental question of, "Does God need us?" If God is just the one who set things in motion, then no, but if God is as we say a part of everything then we are also a part of God and what we do does matter to God. What we do also matters to God because it should matter to us. Giving something up for Lent is meant to help you, not help God, but it helps God too because it helps you grow closer to God through understanding devotion more and being made more thankful for the things you have. God created us to be in community, so sharing our faith in community is a part of how we encounter God and church is on way of doing that. Prayers have been answered because they were shared in community and the act of praying can be a release that in itself is also an answer to prayer. God knows our thoughts and desires because God wants to know them and the way we lift them does matter. We can ask the same questions about so many things. Does anything I do really matter? If I write these blogs everyday faithfully and no one reads them will it have mattered that I wrote them? I may never know if they mattered to anyone else, but the practice of writing them is a part of my own lenten devotion so they matter to me and that has to be enough. When you help someone, but there is still so much more to do that it seems impossible for it to get done, that does not mean your help did not or does not matter. If you make things important, they matter. You are important to God, important enough to have been created in God's own image. You matter to God.