July 27, Gen. 29, Rom. 8:27-29, Mt. 13:31-33. 44-52
When I taught at Illinois State they made a big deal about being the biggest band, not the best mind, but the biggest.Issue of big fish in a small pond-big organizations mean big headaches and great deeds include disasters as well as doing great things
small is resilient. small can be more flexible-steer a jet ski or an aircraft carrier-Don't get me wrong. I am awestruck by the redwoods in Northern California. At the same time, i admire the devotion of a Japanese gardener for a small shrub as well. Small scale items allow us to feel a stake, a participation in something. We crave to be known personally, not be part of a giant statistical data package.
big and small scale God loves the small. Remember EF Schumacher-small is beautiful?
I love that Jesus does not use the example of the acorn into a mighty oak, but a mustard seed creates a nice sized shrub. I love giant sequoia or redwoods, but I love the human sized scale of a shrub too. it is appropriate to its environment, and it can be a home for birds, just like a great tree.In other words, what is the right size? When is small appropriate and when is it not? when I was a child, a 6.5 oz Coke was considered sufficient and now we sell 44oz of glorious carbonation. Mcdonald’s carefully made their tiny ?french Fry bags small to give the illusion of being overflowing, but now we supersize things.Small is capable of doing some things very well. The greatest number of comments I have heard about worship here are all about size at Christmas and Easter, if the crowd was considered big enough or not.we associate small with decline and incapacity. It is a nagging reminder of what once was.
Sometimes we want to feel like the great person but life knocks us down to the level of a shrub. In the dense thicket of family relations in the story of Jacob, Leah is the older sister, but her tricky father substitutes her for the lovely beloved Rachel.She yearns for the love of her husband in this multi spousal family. she offers him her maid to bear children. When she bears children, she names them in hopes that her husband will love hear, or at least see her.Her sister dies in childbirth,a tragedy. her burial place is noted with her husband, perhaps in the cave of the patriarch with Abraham and Sarah and her mother and father-in-law. Leah was made to feel small, unloved and insignificant.
Most of us are, at some point, Leah is not Rachel. There can be but one homecoming queen, one captain of the football team, one valedictorian.Most of us are made to feel small. Most of us feel that we have much to offer if only someone realized it, could see beneath.One of the things that mystify me is that folks outside the church stereotype it as seeing itself full of rachels, and they claim to be treated as Leahs.That damaged sense of self then leads to all sorts of deception, competition, and the like within our relationships.
Paul’s great doxology at the end of Romans 8 applies to us all, young or old, important or small.At some time or another, we may feel like Leah, unloved, unappreciated, unnoticed. We may well doubt that God loves us because we have thought ourselves or been beaten down into feelings of insignificance. Here it again:NOTHING can separate us from the loved of God in Christ Jesus.the security of that love allows us to blossom and flourish no matter what size we are..
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