I don't care....

I just had this thought one day recently when I said to someone, "I don't care...".  I don't know why that particular day was any different than most, but for some reason, I guess God saw me as teachable.  It wasn't just that one incident that I thought about, but as I kept going with my day, and the days that came after, I ran into the idea of the "I don't care" in several places.  I'm a Christian.  Should I not care?  Any act of love should come because I do care.

A Christian friend of mine was at his job.  I watched a few times as he interacted with his client.  He had become so frustrated with his clients that he was to the point of the "I don't care".  But then that raised some questions in my mind.  How would the person that he was interacting with feel?  How did that represent the job that he was doing as a representative of the company he was working with?  How did that reflect on the people that might know him as a follower of Christ?  How would Jesus be represented by him with the "I don't care" attitude?

Not to point a finger because then I started to notice the "I don't care" in areas of my life.  My son would whine something that he wanted to do, and in exasperation I would say, "I don't care....".  Something would come up between my wife and I, and there were those little words again, "I don't care".  

What does "I don't care" really mean?  If you think about it for a minute, it is so selfish.  I don't care.  You are sharing something with me, or you are expressing an idea to me, and I couldn't care less about what you think or feel.  What I want is what matters.  I have pushed aside your thoughts and feelings with little or no consideration.  It is all about me getting what I want.  ME!

So I had some self examination to do.  I had to pray about patience.  I had to pray about learning to love others AGAIN.  Some things will just always be something to learn over and over.  I had to pray for wisdom to try to learn tact when speaking into people's lives.  Some people will hear, but others just KNOW that they know everything.  I'm just learning in so many areas, but I have learned so much in my life through my own mistakes and experience and that of other people.  

In reality, I DO care, or I would not do so many of the things that I do.  I live through a lot of frustration for the cause of Christ.  Working with people can be trying at times.  They all have their own agenda.  Getting people to support a common goal is tough.  Showing them love and caring about their well-being is incredibly hard.  Sometimes in frustration when we say that we don't care, we need to really stop and see that we DO care.

Just some thoughts....