BIG THINGS, small things

Just this morning, I told my daughter to put on her socks and shoes because we needed to head out the door. She said, "Okay" and ran out, only to come back barefoot a few minutes later to say, "Mom, I helped tidy up the living room, and I wanted to bring you your slippers." She wanted to please me by doing a good things, but that was not what I asked her to do. She knew what I had wanted but chose to disobey to do something she thought I would like better.

Sometimes God asks us to do BIG THINGS
and sometimes He asks us to do small things...
Which is which? 
And, does it matter?

"Build an ark"
300 x 50 cubits
75 x 450 feet

Almost 1/2 the width of a football field
(which is 160 feet wide)
and
1 1/2 the length of a football field
(not including the end zones).

The ark was 45 feet high.
That's taller than the average telephone pole.


That's a BIG job...
physically in size
and physically demanding,
and life altering!

The boys have been studying genetics in Science and ratios in Math. Since both subjects mentioned Noah's Ark and we have plenty of space around our house, we decided to measure the length and width of the ark and drive stakes to mark where the four corners would be.

(If you look closely, you'll see the boys standing at the two far corners past the telephone poles.)

Few people will have a BIGGER or more important job to do than Noah, but if I judge the importance of a person by the visible size of their accomplishments then I am using a superficial, worldly, and faulty standard of measurement.

Who wants to do something significant?
Who wants to be great?
Who wants to be important, successful?

The most unlikely folk argued about such things at the most inappropriate times. Why? They were confused about what was really important and were oblivious to what was really going on. And what did Jesus say to them?

• "the least among you is the one who is great"
• "whoever humbles himself... is the greatest"
• "whoever would be great ... must be a servant"

He was born in a barn, lived with the poor, dressed in common clothes. He "made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant". He washed their feet. He was God, but He was humble, lowly. And, HE was the greatest of all.

How does Jesus measure greatness? And who did He commend? "... there is no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Odd, poor, plain (if not ugly in his wild-man-camel-hair get up), no one would call John-the-wilderness-dweller "great" then or now by the world's standards of "greatness".

Q: So, what are the BIG things?
A: What God tells me to do.

Q: What has He told me to do?
A: LOVE GOD
Love Others
Love my husband
Love my kids
Be a servant

As a younger woman, I am specifically told that for now, my "BIG-thing" is my husband, my kids, and my home (see Titus 2). The season for this "important project" will soon be over. I would be a fool if I missed my "Magnum Opus" because I was busy with some insignificant BIG-thing that I had idolized.

I once heard a pastor say, speaking of doing things for God that He never asked us to do, "It's like baking apple pies for God all your life only to get to the end of your life and find out that God didn't like apple pie."

Little things are the BIG-things.

• The widows mite, 
• the tax collector's prayer, 
• the boy's fish and bread, 
• Mary's choice to sit at Jesus feet, 
• the one leper that returned to say "thank you", 
• the few words of the Canaanite woman with great faith, 
• the perfume poured out on Jesus feet, 
• faith the size of a mustard seed ...

God not only sees the little things,
but He calls them the BIG things!

What little thing has He asked you to do?
Drive that stake in the ground, and get started today.