The Power Of Small

Sometimes small is a better fit than BIG.

Years ago, when my daughter Elisabeth was little, I was cleaning out a car I was trading in. As I checked under the driver’s seat for any leftover treasure, I noticed a music tape nestled deep underneath. I got on my knees and started reaching for the tape. To my chagrin, I only managed to touch the edge of it, pushing it further under the low-sitting bucket seat. Undaunted, I pushed my arm deeper into that tiny space. But instead of reaching the prize, the seat began hungrily scratching my forearm as the fatter part of my arm tried to traverse the space.

My daughter watched me struggle for a few moments before she started pulling on my shirt to get my attention.

“Daddy,” she said, peeking over my shoulder into the car.

“Just a minute, honey,” I responded, intent on bagging my prey.

“Daddy,” she said a little more urgently.

“Hold on,” I said insistently. “I’m trying to get this tape . . .”

“Daddy!” she said in a near holler.

I shot upright, a bit perturbed and snapped, “What do you want?”

She leaned past me, shot her little arm under the seat, and easily snagged what I was nearly committing suicide to get. After she handed me the tape and skipped off, I remember thinking, little fits where big doesn’t.

There are places where big just doesn’t win the day.

SIGNIFICANCE VERSUS PROMINENCE

America is a hero culture. Prominence rules. Inconspicuous means insignificant. We tend to think only those who stick outare worthy of adulation. So, the stick-out beautiful, stick-out rich, stick-out talented, fairytalepeople are the only ones who matter—and they are our idols; our American idols. Somehow, these values tell us stick-out proves worth. If people don’t stick out; if they are average, ordinary; they are cellophane.

Nobody notices cellophane.

But does prominence really mean significance? One could argue that there are many significant things that are not prominent at all. Our eyes are obviously more prominent than our lungs, but are they more significant? We can live without eyes. My hands are more prominent than my liver, but I can’t live without a liver. What if the small, hidden things are as significant as the big, prominent things? What if, at times, they are more significant?

The biblical claim is that we were all calibrated by God to make us fit in this world where he wanted us to fit. Your personality (what makes you laugh, what makes you feel loved, how you make decisions, etc.)was on purpose. Your talents and abilities (or lack of them) all play into God’s fitting you into specific places on earth for specific times to reach specific people. (See Acts 17:26.)

This is a cool idea if you happen to be as good-looking as Ben Affleck or Julia Roberts; or if you are as talented as Sting or Bono. But what if you aren’t? What if you are kind of ugly by media standards? What if you can’t sing? What if you can’t speak well in front of people or you aren’t very smart? What if you have what some would call a birth defect? What if your uniqueness is a small uniqueness—it only sticks out after people get to know you? Is that evidence that you are some kind of mistake, or is it possible that God made you small on purpose?

The psalmist claimed that God created “small and great alike” (Ps.115:13). What if God made some of us small intentionally? That would sure explain some things.

MIGHTY SMALL

As modern warfare developed, scientists tried to build bigger and bigger bombs. But some began to argue that the greatest power was not to be found in making bombs bigger, but in unleashing the power of the fundamental building block of the universe—the tiny atom. And sure enough, when they figured out how to release the potential inherent in the smallest of things, it unleashed a staggering, never-before-seen power.

It turns out that the greatest power was in the smallest of places.

I wonder if the church of Jesus Christ is continuing to lose ground in our culture because we keep looking for the next Billy Graham or Mother Teresa—for the BIG bombs. But what if the greatest power for God’s kingdom is found in something a good deal smaller—in the fundamental building block of the Body of Christ: the average, ordinary work-a-day folks who sit in the pews?

What if God’s life was meant to be revealed through ordinary, everyday human life? Dallas Willard wrote, “The obviously well kept secret of the ‘ordinary’ is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows.”

Isn’t it curious that Jesus didn’t enter into the world as royalty or as a famous scholar or wealthy merchant? Why pick tiny Nazareth and a splinter-rich carpentry career for the backdrop of his life? Doesn’t a life destined to change the whole world demand something less common? Yet, commonplace is precisely the spot through which God chooses to reveal and express his life. In the final analysis, it seems God loves to use what we call “ordinary” in some special, mysterious way.

DID I MISS SOMETHING?

I have been in the Christian church for almost forty years and have heard thousands of sermons by a host of ministers. I may have missed something, but I don’t recall many ministers relating how to advance the kingdom of God through the medium of ordinary living. Kingdom advancement is usually attached to an encouragement for folks to consider doing something radical—something great or fourth-of-Julyish for God. Don’t misunderstand me; there are people who are called to do great things that are great in the eyes of others, but to universalize the idea that every God-endeavor has to be spectacular is nothing short of folly. And it is precisely this kind of thinking that wiggles its way into our egos, our expectations, and our planning, and they become monstrous. The commitment to BIG often produces nothing more than supersized egos, gargantuan expectations, and plans that sound reasonable only to madmen.

Just chat with handful of believers who really want to shake the world for God. At least one or two will have dreams that are big—really big. They will tell you, “I don’t know all the details, but it’s going to be big.” If you press them, they will share the details they do know: it will involve millions of people, millions of dollars, and, of course, a private jet.

But maybe that’s all wrong—or at least less right than we think. Maybe the greatest thing the church has to offer the world is not our BIG leaders, BIG buildings, BIG media budgets, or BIG talent, but the simple, small, everyday people of God.

What if that were true?

What would that mean?