"Is It Nothing to You?"

"Is It Nothing to You?"

The alarm didn't go off at 4:30 AM anymore. No urgent radio calls about incoming casualties. No scramble for medical supplies. Just the gentle hiss of his coffee maker and morning light filtering through checkered curtains.

Jim stirred sugar into his mug, his weathered hands still bearing faint scars from those frantic years as a field logistician in refugee camps across South Aisa and Europe. At 57, a health condition had forced him home to his grandmother's old house -the same kitchen where she'd taught him to make her famous honey wheat rolls thirty years ago.

But coming home didn't quieten the memories. There were a lot of live memories and flashes going around in his mind.

Last Tuesday, while mixing bread dough, he'd frozen mid-knead. For a split of a second, he was back in that dusty clinic tent, watching 12-year-old Amara clutch her infected arm while her mother, Rebecca begged him in broken English: "Please, she is all I have left." The duo- mother and daughter were the lobe survivors of family of five from Yemen, and one among the handful of believer families residing in this camp. The antibiotics had run out three days earlier. The supply truck wouldn't come for another week.

He'd saved Amara. But so many others... all Glory to God he’d mumble.

And then, Jim shook his head and returned to the present-back in his old kitchen. His old worn-out buck leather cover Bible lay open on the counter, its pages soft from years of handling. He'd been working through Lamentations not exactly cheerful this morning reading, but something about Jeremiah's raw honesty drew him in. As he read…

"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering?" (Lamentations 1:12)

Those words hit like a physical blow. How many times had he felt exactly that? Standing in refugee camps while Western journalists snapped photos and left. Watching diplomats tour for an hour and declare the situation "manageable." The ache of caring desperately about people the world seemed to ignore.

But then his eyes found verse thirty-one in chapter 3: "No one is cast off by the Lord forever."

And verse 58: "You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life."

Jim closed the Bible and looked around his quiet kitchen. Maybe this wasn't exile. Maybe this was... repositioning.

The first teenager showed up on a Thursday.

Marcus, fifteen, slouched against Jim's doorframe with that brand of defiance that screams, “I don't need anybody”. The kid was staying at Riverside Youth Home two blocks over from Jim’s humble abode, kicked out by his third foster family for "behavioural issues."

"Mrs. Patterson said you might have some work," Marcus mumbled, and not making eye contact.

Jim studied the boy's hollow cheeks, the way his shoulders curved inward like he was trying to disappear. "Actually, I do have. Ever made bread before?", inquired Jim.

What started as odd jobs became something else entirely. Marcus showed up every few days, then daily. Soon, Keisha joined him, a sixteen-year-old aging out of foster care with nowhere to go. Then Carlos, whose mom worked three jobs and couldn't get home until midnight.

Jim's kitchen filled with the sounds he'd missed without realizing laughter echoing off tile walls, the scrape of chairs around his grandmother's old table, the satisfying thump of kneading dough.

He taught them to braid challah and fold croissants. They taught him about TikTok and helped him understand why Keisha sometimes went quiet when sirens passed outside.

One afternoon, while cinnamon rolls cooled on the counter, Marcus asked the question Jim had been waiting for: "Why do you do this? Like, really. You don't know us, still you open your home to us."

Jim looked at these kids Marcus with flour in his hair, Keisha sketching in her notebook, Carlos sneaking pieces of warm bread and he saw Amara's face in them all. All the faces he'd held, healed, or simply sat beside in their darkest moments.

"Someone once asked me that same question," Jim said slowly. "I was your age, angry at everything, convinced nobody cared. My grandmother made me help her bake for the church potluck every Sunday. Drove me crazy." He smiled. "But she saw something in me I couldn't see in myself."

Then he paused, and with a deep breath, choosing his words carefully. "There's this verse that says whatever we do for 'the least of these,' we're really doing it for Jesus. I used to think that meant for the people in refugee camps. But maybe... maybe it also meant for angry teenagers in small-town kitchens."

Marcus was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Your grandmother sounds cool."

"She was. And she'd have loved you guys."

Six months down the line, Jim's kitchen has become legendary at Riverside Youth Home. Kids drop by after school, on weekends, sometimes just when life gets too heavy. They come for the fresh bread, but they stay for something deeper, the radical experience of being truly seen.

Jim keeps his old field medic bag in the pantry now, next to the flour and sugar sacks. Different tools for the same calling: healing wounds, binding up the broken, reminding the forgotten that they matter infinitely to God.

Sometimes, late at night, he still thinks about the ones he couldn't save. But increasingly, he thinks about Jeremiah's promise: "You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life."

God hadn't retired him. He'd just given him a new assignment.

Reflection

After listening to Jim’s story, I believe that suffering ignored doesn’t disappear, it multiplies in silence and shame. But when we pause to truly see those around us, we become God's hands and heart in a hurting world.

Jim discovered that missions isn't always about distant places and dramatic rescues. Sometimes it's about warm kitchens and teenagers who just need someone to believe they're worth the time. Sometimes redemption looks like teaching a foster kid to knead dough and watching them discover they're capable of creating something beautiful.

Where is God calling you to stop and see? Who in your everyday world is crying out, "Is it nothing to you?" The answer to both questions might be the same person.