When Small is Better

Devotional Reading: “Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” Mark 4:32

Matthew, Mark, and Luke mentioned the parable of the mustard seed. Why is this mentioned several times throughout the gospels? For background, mustard seeds are some of the smallest, yet they can grow to 10 feet high. Jesus describes the picture of “birds can perch in its shade.” The smallest of beginnings can end up providing safety and shade to many!

Likewise, Ezekial prophecies about this very scripture when he says,
“‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain… Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the forest will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall…” (Ezekial 17:22-24 ESV).

God is talking about the growth of His kingdom! Birds find shelter from a seed that seems so insignificant you can hardly see it. What a picture of the powerful way God uses small things.

Jesus points out that a mustard seed – the “smallest of seeds on earth” – turns into “the largest of all garden plants.” Jesus uses seeds and trees to teach us a powerful lesson: small beginnings can produce a life-changing impact.

If God is in us and cares about our emotions, downplaying how we feel or what we are experiencing is taking away room for God’s loving care at work.

In this upside-down Christian kingdom where little things make a big impact, it is no wonder the enemy wants us to downplay or disregard how we feel because he knows our smallness is what God wants us to use the most to do big things.

Prayer and Confession
Lord, it can be hard for me to believe or understand fully that you do big things through small people like me. Help me to see myself and my circumstances through your eyes.

Further Reading: Isaiah 35:3, Daniel 4:12