The God of Small Things

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it seems that we live in a culture that is caught up in the super-sized and the superlatives. It seems we see it all over the place – in our language, in our view of the world and in the way we think about things.

The other day I heard about a man who was lamenting that he has been the same size, with no weight gain, for 39 years. But today he has to buy “extra-large” when there was a time he could buy “medium.”

In the burger joint, I’m asked if I want to “super-size” my order and I find myself tempted to purchase a super-size drinks at the C-store when a more average size would serve just as well.

At Starbuck’s, a small coffee is called “tall”, a medium is a “grande” (even though “grande” means large in both Spanish and Italian) and a large is a “venti” which means supreme.

I’ve also noticed a growing trend for people to respond to a question with “absolutely” when “yes” would worked just fine or with “fabulous” when something more modest like “fine” would have worked just as well.

You see, we are a superlative people in a very large world. Even though technology has allowed the world to “shrink” in many ways, the world is just as big and confusing and complex as it always was.

The world’s story is a superlative story. It is a story of “bling-bling” and glitz and flash and dazzle. It is a story of super-sized, double XX, “big-gulp” and “venti”. It’s a world of fabulous and absolutely. You know what I mean.

And then there is God’s story. God’s story is a story of small things. God’s story is about little miracles in out-of-the way places. God’s story is about mustard seed faith and new life out of old dead stumps. God’s story is about newborns placed in the hands of old people and boy’s slaying goliaths. God’s story is about a God who comes to us in whispers and words carried on the breath of life.

God’s story, the Christmas story, is a story of God becoming one of us, God becoming a human baby, birthed to a poor family in a backwater town. It is the story of God coming with a whisper of a baby.

This should not deceive us, though. This small God is the only God big enough to claim, love, redeem save and transform our lives and the world around us.

Yesterday, I was glancing through some pictures and came across this one. Of course, it is Owen, as an infant, grasping his father’s nose. But when I saw it, that’s not what I saw.

In the imagination of my spirit I saw an image of God as a baby, in human flesh, reaching out with love to touch the heart of a world longing to be loved. I saw an image of God touching me. And my heart smiled!

So, during these Advent days, as you wade through the glitz and the glitter, the busyness and the clutter, I pray that somewhere in there, you’ll hear the small voice of the infant Jesus who came to love you and I pray that somehow, you’ll feel the infant Jesus’ redemptive and loving touch.