Does God Care About Our Problems? Yes, Even the Small Ones

Yes. The Bible teaches that God cares for each person, in small needs as well as great ones. Jesus says that no sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father and that the hairs of each head are numbered (Matthew 10:29–31), and 1 Peter 5:7 says “he cares for you.”

Scripture tells it through people as well as promises. Hagar, a servant who had fled from her mistress, was alone in the wilderness when the Lord spoke to her, and she gave him a name: “a God of seeing” (Genesis 16:13). He sees each of us the same way, in the large trouble and in the small one.

What does the Bible say about God’s care for each person?

The clearest statement comes from Jesus, sending out the twelve apostles: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29–31). Luke’s version has five sparrows sold for two pennies and says that “not one of them is forgotten before God” (Luke 12:6–7). The reasoning runs from the lesser to the greater: God attends to birds sold for a penny, and people are “of more value than many sparrows.”

The Sermon on the Mount applies the same reasoning to food and clothing. “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26). Of the worry over what to eat, drink and wear, Jesus says that “your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Matthew 6:32). The First Letter of Peter tells its readers to humble themselves under God’s hand, “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6–7), and Psalm 55:22 says: “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.”

The Old Testament shows the same care for a whole people and for single persons. From the burning bush God tells Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings” (Exodus 3:7). Hagar, a servant who had fled from her mistress into the wilderness, names the Lord who spoke to her “a God of seeing” (Genesis 16:13). In Isaiah God asks, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up the biblical witness in one sentence: “God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history” (paragraph 303).

Does God care about small problems?

The examples Jesus chose are small ones: a sparrow, a hair, the next meal, a set of clothes. The prayer he taught asks for “our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Paul tells the Philippians not to be anxious “about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). In the Gospels Jesus feeds a crowd because “they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat” (Matthew 15:32), and his first sign, at Cana, answers a wedding that has run out of wine (John 2:1–11).

The point has been disputed. In the eighteenth century some writers held that God governs the world through general laws and does not attend to individual lives. John Wesley answered them in his sermon “On Divine Providence,” preached on Luke 12:7, “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” He summed up their view as “the little affairs of men are far beneath the regard of the great Creator” and replied: “I believe the Bible; wherein the Creator and Governor of the world himself tells me quite the contrary.”

Why does it sometimes seem that God does not care?

Scripture records the complaint in almost the same words. Caught in a storm on the lake while Jesus sleeps, the disciples wake him: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38). He calms the wind and asks, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40). Martha, left to serve alone, asks, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” and Jesus tells her she is “anxious and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:40–41).

The psalms give words to the same fear: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). On the cross Jesus cried out the opening of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), and Isaiah says of God, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself” (Isaiah 45:15). Both psalms end in trust. Psalm 13 closes, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love” (Psalm 13:5), and Psalm 22 goes on to say that God “has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (Psalm 22:24).

Care in the Bible does not always mean that the trouble goes away. Paul asked three times to be rid of what he calls a “thorn” in his flesh and was told, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7–9). Jesus also rejected the idea that suffering shows God’s disfavor. Of eighteen people killed when a tower fell in Siloam he asked, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you” (Luke 13:4–5), and of a man blind from birth he said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents” (John 9:3).

How do Christians explain God’s care in the face of suffering?

All the main traditions affirm that God cares and that he brings good out of evil. They cite Joseph’s words to the brothers who sold him, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20), and Paul’s statement that “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). They differ over how closely God’s will governs each event, and so over why he allows suffering.

The Reformed tradition teaches that God directs everything that happens, hardship included. The Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 says that “leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand,” and that creatures are so completely in God’s hand “that without his will they can neither move nor be moved” (answers 27 and 28).

The Catholic Church distinguishes between what God causes and what he permits. “God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it” (Catechism, paragraph 311). The Catechism says that “no quick answer will suffice” (309) and says that God would not permit an evil “if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life” (324).

Methodists and others in the Arminian tradition stress human freedom. Wesley taught that God governs people “so as not to destroy either their understanding, will, or liberty,” because “were human liberty taken away, men would be as incapable of virtue as stones.” On this view God does not prevent every evil by overriding human choices, though he cares for every person. All three traditions look ahead to the promise that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4).

Will God help with personal problems?

The Bible encourages people to bring their troubles to God in prayer and to keep asking. Jesus told a parable to teach “that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). The promise Paul attaches to prayer about worries is peace rather than a particular outcome: “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

The New Testament also presents Jesus as sharing human sorrow. At the tomb of his friend Lazarus, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35), and Hebrews says that Christians do not have “a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). Much of the help Scripture describes comes through other people. Paul calls God the one “who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4), and tells the Galatians, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Hagar was alone when God saw her. Often he sees us through someone who sits beside us and takes up part of the load.

Related reading

• Is worrying a sin? What Scripture tells us
• Bible verses about suffering