What’s your prayer for the Ukraine? How about for Russians who object to what their leader is doing? Have you been praying about the pandemic, or the Canadian trucker convoy, or other world events?

What do you say, when you pray? What images fill your mind? Do you feel hopeful or worried? Confident or doubtful?

Some of you, I know, are Mennonite women who jump from blog posts by Lucinda or Shari to my site. You practice a non-resistant faith, holding to strong, counter-cultural convictions as you seek to follow Jesus. Other readers are unvaccinated Canadians who support the truckers and an end to mandates. Others are more mainstream in their views.

Your prayers and mine might look different.

Can we be friends anyway?

I think we can.

At this time, when crisis seems to follow on the heels of crisis, I want to remind you of something. God sees you.  He is very aware that you are, right now, looking at a screen, reading my blog post. He knows where you are and what worries you. Have you turned to Him for hope? For help? Are you His?

I am.

I find it reassuring to know that in the same way God sees me, here in my home office, typing away, He also sees each person in the world – people in Kiev and mothers of Russian soldiers and jailed truckers and intubated patients in the local hospital. All the people I want to help – but can’t. All those countries with bad things going on. This stuff is too big for me.

Today my elderly aunt will pick up a mystery at her local library. My daughter plans to edit an essay about dying languages. My husband is, right now, cutting wood with a scroll saw in his basement workshop. These are (some of) my people and I can keep track of them. Mostly.

God’s awareness of me (and you) runs deeper. His fingertips rest on my heart. My days are in His hands. Each moment, as I breathe in and breathe out, as my heart beats solidly or sporadically, He feels it.

He knows your heart, too.

When you get worried about the world, try to remember this. A world that is too big for you and me is not too big for Him. All of my moments are not good ones. But I am never alone. Neither are you. And neither are they.

Place yourself in His hands every morning. Then widen the scope. Put your loved ones in His hands. And then the world.

There’s a God who sees (me and you and others too).