On being noticed

I've already mentioned that last week we had a lot of people come along to Overcomers Outreach. One of those attending was a minister and speaker whose name many would know (I'll call him Rev X) who came along, not because he is in recovery himself, but because he wants to start a similar program in his own church.

What happens earlier in the evening at these meetings we go around the room and people introduce themselves while Penny, my friend who runs the evening, writes down a list of names and a few notes. Last week, because we'd squeezed people in and some had arrived late this list ended up all out of order, instead of just going smoothly around the room.

Then later in the evening Penny comes back to this list and we go around the room gathering prayer points from each person - a petition point and a praise point. I usually get skipped for this part, because I am there as a "supporter" and don't need to take up time, especially on a night like last week. So, Penny went around noting the prayer points, jumping here and there as she went through her disordered list. She was just about to hand over to Chris Allen, the minister from the Healing Service who actually does the praying most nights, when suddenly Rev X (who'd been sitting there looking like he was exhausted, which would hardly have been surprising) half raises his hand and interrupts, then turns and looks over at me and says "did you get a prayer point?". To this Penny laughed and said "Alison is a friend of mine who's here to support me and so we've just skipped her tonight".

Later I chatted briefly to Penny in the after-meeting hum and she says "wasn't Rev X great!" and we had a chuckle. But I was thinking to myself 'yes, I'm going to like that man forever, and probably think highly of him too, for that' - all because he noticed that I'd been skipped for a prayer point, when I wasn't even expecting to get one. And even as I thought it the next thought was, it's funny how I feel so heartened and encouraged just by the fact that some random person, who I don't even know, noticed that I'd been overlooked (as he saw it), and acknowledged that (I'm sure people sometimes notice things, but they don't let you know that they notice, so it's lost on you). And I reminded myself that God always notices, and so how much more should I feel encouraged by the fact that the creator of the universe notices every little time I am overlooked - and so like him for it, and be grateful too! (as later in the evening I went to say thanks to Rev X).

Up at Katoombe Easter Convention, Stephen Um was giving an illustration in one his talks (it's near the end that link) from a Hollywood movie. He was all very humorous and cagey in how he went about it, putting off for as long as possible any of us guessing the movie, because we finally had enough information to know that it was Richard Gere and whoever else in Shall we Dance? (I've never seen that version of the movie, but have seen the Japanese original and that's quite nice). Along the way he made the point that you can almost always find something redemptive in films (and I admired his generosity of spirit for that - we can be all too clever at spotting what's wrong with everything).

In this particular film, as many of you will know, a fellow is bored with his life and every night on his train ride home from his boring job he looks in the window of a dance studio. One day he decides he is going to learn to dance, to surprise his wife and spice up his life, so he starts taking lessons in secret. His wife begins to notice how much later he is coming home from work and that his behaviour has altered so she hires a private investigator. Eventually the investigator comes to the wife and says "he's not having an affair, he's just learning how to dance", and then he asks the wife "what's so good about marriage anyway?". And her answer is what Stephen Um says was the redemptive moment of this movie. I didn't get it all down (and haven't downloaded the talk or watched the movie, but perhaps I will), but what she said was like this: "We need a witness to our lives ... In marriage we promise to care about everything ... Your life will not go unwitnessed."

Maybe that has a note of sadness in it for single people, because the plain reality is that no-one on this earth is going to care about the details of your life in the way a spouse does (which is what I was acknowledging near the end of this poem). But GOD does. And Stephen Um went on to tell us that God is a witness to our lives, and that his suffering was a way of saying that he notices our suffering ...

And that is my lunch time ramble about being reminded lately that God notices.