BIG and small

I read a blog post yesterday from Pete Wilson. He writes the blog Without Wax is a pastor at Cross Point Church in the Nashville area and the author of the book Plan B. What he had posted the other day was something that really stood out to me. He quoted from a blog that Kevin DeYoung had written on Ligonier Ministries Blog about those people that "plod" along in the church. It really stuck with me too and I have been thinking about his words off and on for the last couple of days, processing them and mulling them over a bit.


The gist of the quote dealt with the fact that many of the church people in my generation, or my age group (late 20s-early 40s) and how we seem to treat church and following Jesus. We all want to be the ones that change the world, but we want to do it in a "big" way, rather than in the plodding, mundane ways of our regular, everyday lives. Because of this desire we tend to short change what it really should mean to be the Church, the body and bride of Christ.

So many times we get caught up in the BIG. To the point that we tend to miss the small. It's easy to do after all. We look in the Bible at the stories there and we see how God seems to show up in the big ways, where everyone takes notice. And we seem to have gotten to a point where we think that if it's not this big miraculous happening, then God is not showing up. If the worship service doesn't go off a certain way, or we don't get that great mountain top feeling then that must mean that God wasn't there. We want to home run, not the sacrifice bunt.

God tends to show up in the regular, dull, mundane things that we do. Those things that we don't tend to take note of, the valleys when we have come off of the mountain top. In 1 Kings Elijah is hiding in a cave and complaining to to God about how he has done such great things for him and yet the queen wants him dead. He's just had this great mountain top experience where the power and presence of God showed up in a big obvious way. Now he is in the valley and he is having to find God in that life. When he looks out of the mouth of the cave, he doesn't see God  in the huge things: the raging fire, the earthquake, the powerful wind. Instead he hears and experiences God in the stillness of the gentle breeze. Not in the big, but in the small.

Moses saw the burning bush and we so often say we want to have that "burning bush" moment, for God to show up in such a way that we can't help but take notice of Him. The thing is though, it doesn't seem to be that the bush was on fire that got the attention of Moses, but rather that the fire wasn't consuming the bush. There is a big difference there. It is possible that with Moses having spent 40 years wandering this desert as a shepherd that this wasn't a new occurrence for his to come upon a bush that was burning. After all it was hot, there were sure to be dry bushes that caught fire at random. This was something that was not new for Moses it would seem. God used the common place, the every day happening to show up and speak to Moses.

The same can and should be true for us. When we are seeking God on a regular basis in ALL the aspects of our lives then finding him in the midst of vaccuming the living room or cleaning the bathroom won't surprise us. Instead it should inspire us to be moving toward God and learning to follow him no matter what, big and small.

Grace, Peace and Love y'all.