God doesn’t only care about influencers
In the past few years, we have seen the rise of a new career choice: the influencer. An influencer is someone who has many followers on social media and is therefore paid to advertise products. As they ‘influence’ many people, some can make a lot of money in this manner. From an advertiser’s perspective, and perhaps even from the perspective of people who are active social media users, it matters how many followers someone has and how influential they might be.
God doesn’t see the world this way. We are drawn to impressive people, people who are Somebody, whose names we know and whose opinions are broadcast in the media. In contrast, God cares for every single one of his people. Even the ones who are not well known and have little influence over the opinions of others.
We see this in 2 Kings 3 and 4. In 2 Kings 3, Elisha is incredibly rude to the unfaithful king of Israel, Jehoram, when the king asks the prophet for help. He is dismissive; Elisha is not swayed by the impressive clothes and the power of this man. In contrast, in 2 Kings 4, when a faithful debt-laden widow whose name we don’t know comes to Elisha for help, he immediately asks what he can do.
We see this illustrated further as we read more of 2 Kings 4. Elisha first promises an impossible child to a woman of Shunem, and later raises that same child from the dead. He then purifies inedible stew for a collection of unnamed sons of the prophets and feeds many in a miraculous way. All of these miracles are done for ordinary people. Their names are not recorded. They didn’t live in the capital city and didn’t come from impressive families. God cared for them and provided for them even though they were no-one special.
At times, all of us can feel like we are no-one special. Most of us can relate to the description of the early Christians in Corinth: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. (1 Cor. 1:26 ESV) Those things matter to the people in our world. They want to spend their time and effort on people who are important. Yet God cares even for the least of his children.
This means that if you are a Christian, you matter immensely to God. Remember that on the days you feel alone and small. Even if your boss doesn’t recognise your input and your family don’t spend time on you, God loves you more than you can know.
It also means that churches cannot focus only on the so-called influencers. It makes no difference who comes through our doors, whether they are important in the eyes of the world or if they are not. We need to welcome the mentally ill, the elderly, and the lonely; we must not be like the world and only focus on the young and beautiful. God cares deeply for those whose names will never be on a ‘most influential’ list somewhere, and so should we.