Bigger Isn't Always Better

The person who is trustworthy in small matters is also trustworthy in great ones…Luke 16:10
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One of my mom’s favorite sayings was, “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill!” It was her way of keeping me from being dramatic or overwhelmed and I’m grateful for the lesson because that silly little line always made me stop and check my perspective.  In the heat of the moment or the center of a crisis it can be pretty easy for molehills or small problems to look like mountains.  Something I came across the other day reminded me of mom and her famous line.  The phrase that caught my attention was this, fretting magnifies the problem, but prayer magnifies God. 

We live in a world that is programmed to look for the bigger choice.  We want the bigger cup of coffee or the extra scoop of ice cream and the vehicle with more leg room.  On some level most of us fall prey to the notion that bigger is better; especially when we get a “deal” on it.  We seem to go through life looking for the mountains and sometimes things get unrealistically inflated and we can lose our perspective and get carried away.  In a society that embraces big…the Father is often leading us in the opposite direction.

I’m taking a Scripture class, and the teacher was drawing comparisons between Saul the King in the Old Testament who lost his way and got tangled up with power and “bigness” and Saul in the New Testament who was also on a quest to be big…so big he found it his lifes mission to stamp out the name of Jesus.  I had never really connected those two dots and thought about the similarities of the two Sauls so as I did a little thinking about the two I remembered watching Jim Caviezel (Jesus in the Passion of the Christ) speak and he taught that the word Saul means big and the word Paul means small.  I’m pretty sure Paul found greater favor and did a better job living out his discipleship and seeking the Will of the Father than Saul’s did.  I think when we get stuck on seeking or chasing the big things it’s easier to drift away from the Father but the more we focus on the little, the more the big things of the world lose their appeal. We begin to realize molehills are often much better than mountains.  The truth spoken by someone much smarter and holier than me is this…If God isn’t bigger than my life, my life is bigger than God.  Scripture is full of stories of people who showed us what happens when our life gets too big. 

God wants our little…little hearts, little worries, little problems, little attempts to be holy.  When we bring them, He clams all the fears, anxieties and troubles.  Corrie Ten Boom said, “Anything too small to take to prayer is too small to be a burden. He turns our little tries at goodness into giant success and he takes our big troubles and worries and squishes them up small.  I suppose today is the perfect day to stop looking at the big things and start thinking about the little things I can take to God.
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A Seed To Plant:  Where might the Father be asking you to trade big for little?
Blessings on your day!