Embracing Being "Small"

Photo by Jörg Schubert

There's a part of me that really wants to be famous.

I think it's because I long to leave a meaningful mark on this world.

When you get into your twenties, you become well acquainted with the struggle for meaning. If you haven't made it here yet -- get excited. It's something to look forward to. Late nights of wondering what the heck you're doing with your life, wondering if you may have missed an opportunity along the way, wondering what might have happened if you had majored in that OTHER thing in college.

My Resistance To "Small"

I've been pondering such ideas in the past year. So if I have described you, you're not alone. There seems to be something calling out to me when I get alone with my thoughts, that tells me my life needs to mean something... that it needs to amount to something.

That voice often ends up garbled. That is to say, I translate that restless feeling into sentences. Accusatory sentences with pointed fingers, saying, "Look at what you've done. Or should I say, look at what you haven't done. This other person is four years younger than you and already famous. They're changing things, and making a difference in the world. You, you're just... well... you."

I really want to mean something. I want to influence and impact a lot of people. I want to be a guy on TV, fighting for what I believe in, with my own foundation and my own books and my own mind-blowing ideas.

But you know, it may not go down like that. I may never end up saving the world. And if I don't, is that okay?

God's Heart For "Small"

God showed me something a few years ago. I was taking a spiritual formation class my dad teaches each year, and he decided to take us on a silent retreat to a lodge. We had to drive an old church bus up an 80 degree angle to get to the cabin we stayed at. When we got there, my dad handed us some sheets of paper which contained instructions for the retreat. There were some chants on there, those things where the leader says something and then everyone else says something back.

One of the sentences on the sheet of paper caught my eye immediately, and I couldn't stop looking at it. It said, For those who suffer and those who go back to be with them.

Going back to be with those who suffer. It put a picture in my mind of myself chasing a spotlight that was moving as fast as I could run. But the people Jesus said to take care of were hurting in the dimly lit corner. In order to go back for them, I had to give up my chase for the spotlight.

It did something to me and my fame desiring self. I ran it back through my mind over and over.  It felt like something was yelling from a place deep within me that I hadn't been paying much attention to lately. I had listened to that voice before, though, and I knew who it was. God had something he wanted to say.

Over the next 12 hours of silence, God showed me that there's a special part of his heart reserved for the "small." He enjoys the fanfare just fine, but something about him also enjoys the quiet, the faithful, and the hidden. I mean, look at the way he snuck into the world. He was born in a stable, for crying out loud. To a pair of teenagers. And then he became an unassuming carpenter. Not a royal ruler like the Jews were expecting, a carpenter. Isn't that crazy?

It's like he was trying to show people that things don't have to look meaningful to be meaningful.

Small Love Is Meaningful

It seems as though you've got the big voice Christians who are influencing lots of people, and you've got the everyday Christians who are loving the people in their lives one at a time. One isn't actually more important than the other. Nobody's going to see the work of the everyday Christian. But God does. And he really likes it.

I'm daily tempted to believe this lie: You're not doing enough, you're not accomplishing what God wants of you, unless you are getting famous. You're not working hard enough, well enough, smart enough.

That will kill you. That will take all your joy. That is a sneaky way to make you measure your worth by your performance. And that is not the Gospel.

Some of the most important things that happen for the sake of the Kingdom in individual lives come from the unknown deeds of an unknown warrior, an agent of love, working unnoticed in the shadows. This imagery is absolutely brimming with life to me. There's something sacred and holy about it.

I'm not famous. You're probably not famous (I'm playing the odds game here). The work we do for the Kingdom probably isn't going to be televised or shouted from the rooftops by all our friends. It's going to be small. We are going to be working from the place of the unknown. But let me just tell you, the place of the unknown is one of God's most treasured places. That's where he meets with the ones who go back to be with those who suffer. And he loves it.

Bringing it home with Gandalf the Grey

The small things are often the things that paradoxically bring the most potent change into the world. Gandalf said it best, like he usually does, when he said this in The Hobbit:

“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay… small acts of kindness and love.”

Strong.

Maybe, when I'm longing to have a big impact on the world, its actually my misdirected desire to see the brokenness of the world fixed. And maybe if God's desires for the world can come to fruition by me being "small," then maybe it's time to get "small." This story is ultimately about him, not me.

I think I'm okay with that. Because when no one else is celebrating the small things, that's when God is the sole audience. And that's where I'll get the applause I really long for.