Too Small To Fail

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. ~St. Augustine

My best days begin with the reminder to be small.

The setting was a beautiful back yard garden, the occasion, a fundraiser tea. My low-key task of the moment was to help arrange a display of Melanie’s stunning photograph note cards for purchase. I held up the bluebird photo, and we commented on the visual dissonance–a feathered beauty perched on vicious, unyielding wire. The bird seems unconcerned, care-less of the pointed barbs the rest of us rightly avoid.

Because we don’t know how to be small.

Staring at the photo, I notice how generous a space the bluebird enjoys. Plenty of room to gaze at the meadow, to dance in the rain, to spread its wings and soak in the sun. The barbs are present, but powerless.

Small Enough To Fly

Lately, God and I have played ping-pong with my thoughts. I judge someone, and he deftly bounces my similar flaws over the net. I express outrage at maltreatment, and he returns a reminder of my own carelessness toward others. I cry of injustice, and he lays down his paddle with a question, “How do you plan to become more just?”

God is not unkind, but merciful. He is reminding me the barbs only hurt because I’ve gotten too big.

• When I measure others by the standard of me.
• When my pride can’t handle the slightest offense.
• When I long to change everyone else in the world except the one person I can change.

Me.

He’s urging me to be small, so I have room to fly.

“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep-sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.”
― Andrew Murray

Are you learning to be small?

Photograph by Melanie Hunt