All the small things

When something big hapens and we want to fully express the enormity of it's bigness we compare it to the Bible.

It's not suprising though, the flood, for example, was pretty big.  The beginning of the world was too, not to mention the upcoming end of the world.  The plagues seemed to be large scale and some of the miracles would definately get noticed. However not everything good in the Bible was celebrated because of it's enormity.

The people of Irsael, due to an endless round of unfaithfullness towards God, got taken captive and whisked off to Babylon.  After some time some of them returned to Jerusalem and wanted to rebuild.  One of the big projects was the Temple.  This was the centrpiece of their worship and the original Temple was a masterpiece of design and beauty - and it was big, real big.

The guy in charge of rebuilding was called Zerubbabel  (it's a name that is sure to catch on again) and he set to work rebuilding the Temple fit for the modern Israel.  When the foundations had been laid the folks all decided to have a party to give thanks for God's graciousness.

This is all good but some old the older guys where dissapointed because the new version of the temple was a lot smaller than the original.  Between the celebrating and comiserating the noise could be heard from miles around, it's all there in the book of Ezra.

They shouldn't have complained.  God does not get dimensions wrong.  If something is small, if numbers are few, then it is that way for good reason.  In the church these days we often judge success or failure by the numbers in attendence, it is a very hard habit to break.  But we need to remember that God is in control; and, if He thinks we can handle a lot he will give us a lot, if it is the time for small then we will have small.

Who despises the day of small things? Men will rejoice when they see the plumb-line in the hand of Zerubbabel.

Zechariah 4:10

Don't despise the small things because the small things are the Lord's.

Count them

Sometimes, just sometimes we forget to be thankful.

God has blessed me so much and yet sometimes the first thing I do when talking to him is to ask for more. On one occasion Jesus healed ten men of Leprosy (Luke 17:12-19).  Only one came back to say thank-you.  Are you one of the nine or are you like the one who came back? I know which one I want to be but sometimes I am thoroughly ungrateful.

I think we need to count our blessings more, and we need to tell others about what we have to be thankful for.

You see being a witness for Christ is just that, telling others how He's blessed you. And we are called to be witnesses.  Of course sometimes life is very difficult.  It's at those times when it is most important to remember what God has done for us in the past, then we will find reassurance that He will not abandon us in the hard times.

So I would encourage you now to leave a wee comment to tell what you have to be thankful to God for.  This will be a reminder to anyone else reading this what a gracious and merciful God we have.


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And a cheesy tune to cheer you up!

(Special thanks to CM for her wonderful link and apologies to JH for sharing it with others!)