Holy God:
We thank you for your grandeur, your majesty. We thank you for your great love, which is wider than the oceans, deeper than the seas, more vast than all of the universe. You are God, Lord of all, knower of all that can be known, sovereign over all things, creator, sustainer, redeemer.
We love to think of you as being a big God, for we like big things, and we love to think of a big God being our God. We like to feel big, to be a part of a big country with lots of money and power. We like to build big things, to drive big cars on big roads, to live in big houses, to feel as if our influence and our name are big. We are impressed by big people, big stadiums, big lights, big events. We have been taught to dream big dreams and to pursue big goals. We shy away from things that seem small, or poor, or insignificant, or unambitious. We have seen a lot and we are hard to impress.
You are bigger than all we can imagine, and you certainly could choose to do things in big ways and to use the kinds of big things we so admire. And yet, you chose small and insignificant things to show your heart. You could have sent your son to be born into Rome with its great big empire and far reaching influence, and yet you chose for him to be born into tiny little Nazareth. You could have chosen Egypt with its great big pyramids, and yet you chose Abraham and his little family. You could have chosen the wisdom of the Greeks, yet you chose the folly of an incorrigible clan of wilderness wanderers.
You told us to have the faith of a mustard seed--small faith. But we want to believe big. We want big faith. We want to see miracles and dramatic changes. We want to see the nations won to Christ, but we overlook the people in our house. We want to have hearts purified to be completely given to you, but we don’t want to whisper a halting desperate prayer. We want to build a great church, but we easily overlook our brother and sister before us. We want big faith. You have only offered us small faith.
We mustard seed is easy to drop, easy to lose, easy to miss. We miss it again and again.
Give us small faith. Give us humble hearts. Give us small vision, that what becomes may be great only because you have made it great because only you are truly grand.
Amen.
