Embracing The Gospel of Small

gospel of small

So much of what God does is quiet. It seems he loves to hide in plain sight, and often he’s perfectly content to start small. All of this causes us to scratch our heads in disbelief. After all, isn’t he the God of all creation? Didn’t he speak the worlds by his words and part the Red Sea for Moses? Of course he did, and a good deal more. But then there’s what I call the gospel of small.

The Gospel of Small

It’s just that for all the big, instant and show stopping moments that God has provided in his rather extravagant career, there have been as many, possibly even more, that went completely unseen. The gospel of small. And to the degree that we see or think about God as ‘big’ we are potentially conditioning ourselves to the miss the God who is small, slow, hidden and progressive.

In fact, most of God’s biggest moves are precisely the ones that started the smallest. Creation started with a word, perhaps igniting the big bang, but no one knows exactly how long it took for molecules and elements to combine and rearrange into the world we now enjoy — most likely it was more than 6,000 years. After all, it’s taken me the better part of 15 years to get over teenage angst, and that’s with the help of the Spirit, the very same Spirit that was present and at work in creation! Furthermore, when God decided to rescue his beloved creation from sin and death, he sent his son — an 8 lb. 8 oz. baby! And this baby grew up, unnoticed by anyone for years. Of course Jesus made a few heads turn when he was 12, and then, nothing. Just living at home and working with his adopted dad for the next 18 years!