The Courage To Be Small

In the Old Testament, Naaman was one of the highest ranking generals in Syria, which at the time was the region’s largest empire. He was also a leper. And he learned that in Israel there was a prophet who could perform miracles. So, he rode to visit the prophet Elisha, but the prophet would not see him, but sent his servant out instead. The servant told him that if he would be cleansed from his leprosy, he should bathe seven times in the River Jordan. Now, Naaman had traveled far and wide and had probably seen much more impressive rivers with far greater historical significance than this little River Jordan in this backwater country of Israel. And Naaman almost refused to do this small and simple thing. But his servant persuaded him that since Naaman had been prepared to do some great thing, how much easier was it to do a small and simple thing. A lot of times we look at where we’re at in life and where we think we ought to be and we wish that there was just this one, big, all powerful act that we can perform to fix everything all at once, for now and forever. We hope that God will just zap us with this completely changed spirit and never again will we raise our voice in anger, or fudge on our tithing, or grumble at having to help out on a service project. It takes courage to look at the tangled mess of our life and say, I’m going to untangle just one knot today. I’m going to count to ten one time today before I start shouting, or I’m going to do the hard thing and admit that I was wrong and I lost my temper and I shouldn’t have shouted. And if tomorrow our life gets tangled into the same knots we just untied yesterday, it takes courage to try and untangle it again today. It takes courage to accept that it may take days and months and years of patience and commitment and effort to do the small and simple things, one by one, without any kind of grand gestures or bolts of lightning from on high. We don’t have to do these small and simple things alone, and those around us who love us will help us to recognize where there is still work to do, whether we want them to point that out or not. We all start out as small and simple people, and we can wallow in our smallness and refuse to lift a finger until God zaps us into something bigger, or we can do one small and simple thing at a time until we have built of ourselves through the grace of God something far grander than we could have imagined.