WHEN YOU THINK NOBODY CARES

By Ada Brownell

I stared out the kitchen window of my mobile home looking at the pile of uranium tailings and shacks that sheltered various aspects of the small mill.

Down the dirt road was the acid plant. As I washed dishes at the sink, I hated Thompson, Utah, a tiny town on the desert populated with 100 people, but a metropolis of rattlesnakes and rabbits. There were a few comfortable homes but more dilapidated buildings, a schoolhouse, a motel, hotel and three bars. The only place to buy groceries was in the bars.

My husband, a telegraph operator for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, had been “bumped.” That’s how we left our church in Fruita and the large extended family in the area around Grand Junction, Colo., and became stranded in a world surrounded by sagebrush, cactus and blowing dirt—and no friends.

Mama had passed away six months earlier. After raising eight kids of his own, Daddy married a woman he had just met and none of us knew. She had two teen-age children.

My husband and I discussed our loneliness. The whole town seemed to gather in the bars on weekends while we sat at home. Who would care if we turned our backs on the Lord? My brothers and sisters had careers and families of their own. We had been driving 38 miles to a Moab, Utah, church and as yet hadn’t met anyone who seemed to care about us.

Have you ever felt no one cares about you? Three things helped me when I dropped into that pit.

            I remembered God in the past.

            A special relationship started for me when I learned “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” as a toddler about the time my family came to the Lord. Although it’s a children’s song, the truth never changes.

            During my teens God set my soul on fire with the Holy Spirit. I prayed privately every day, studied the Word, and a burden for souls took hold of me. I was elected president of the youth group at age 15.

            I knew God loved me and had a plan for my life, and I believed He did the same for others.       The youth group grew and prospered, but my work there came to an end when I got married and we moved.

            God reminded me He is in the present, too.

            Jeremiah, known as “the weeping prophet,” was so sorrowful one of his books in the Bible is named “Lamentations.” Jeremiah wrote, “This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit” (Lamentations 1:16).

            Often when we are discouraged our problems loom larger than they are, or we forget our all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present loving God.

             It was good for me to remember Jeremiah whom God lifted and set his feet on higher ground. The wonderful hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” was inspired by Jeremiah’s writings. He wrote: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, and his compassions never fail. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).

            So I remember God has been faithful until this day and I thank Him because He will be faithful tomorrow.

            In Thompson, God touched my heart and I asked Him to send me a helper. He sent a fine Christian woman my age to town within a week and we started a Sunday school in the school house. Before she died, my mother had given me a box full of Sunday school materials.

Before long, we made friends in Moab. Interesting our closest buddies were new to Moab, and were searching for friends also.

 God was in the present, but I was reminded God is in my future, too.

When we read the Word we realize God will be with us forever. He said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6 and Hebrews 13:5).

            We know God has an exciting future for us. He’s preparing a home in heaven (John 14), and the first thing he’s going to do after He catches away the church is celebrate with a big dinner (See Revelation 19:9).

            We will have new bodies for the occasion according to 2 Corinthians 5:4: While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.”

            The experience in Thompson is years ago now, but God taught a valuable lesson. God was with me yesterday, He’s with me today, and will be in all my tomorrows.