The Little Way

When the exiles came home and began to rebuild the house of God, the foundation they laid was poor and small beside the glory of the former temple that the old men remembered, and some of them wept at the smallness of it, and the work was despised. And into that discouragement God spoke a word that has heartened the small and the hidden ever since. For who hath despised the day of small things? It is asked as a rebuke to those who would look down on the small beginning, and a comfort to those doing the small work, that God himself does not despise the day of small things, but is in it, working.

We are prone, all of us, to despise the small. We measure worth by size and visibility, and the small beginning, the small work, the small grace, seems to us hardly worth the doing. We want the great and the impressive, the large result we can see and others can admire, and we grow discouraged when our labors and our progress seem so small. But this is not God’s way of reckoning, and the whole of Scripture stands against it. The day of small things is precisely the day of God’s working, and to despise it is to despise the very thing he is doing.

GOD’S LOVE OF THE SMALL

For God has always loved to work by the small. He chose the least of the tribes and the youngest of the sons, passed over the tall and the strong to anoint the shepherd boy, and fed a multitude from a few small loaves in a child’s basket. The Lord likened his kingdom to a grain of mustard seed, the least of all seeds, which grows into the greatest of herbs, and to a little leaven that a woman hid in the meal until the whole was leavened. God hath chosen, the apostle says, the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty, and the base things, and things which are despised. The kingdom of God grows from small, hidden, despised beginnings, for that is how its King delights to work.

The widow’s two mites, worth almost nothing, the Lord counted more than all the rich men’s gifts, for she gave out of her poverty all that she had. The cup of cold water given to a little one shall in no wise lose its reward. Again and again the Lord lifts up the small thing that men overlook and declares its worth in heaven, teaching us that nothing done for him is too small to matter, and that the measures of the kingdom are not the measures of the world, which weighs only the large and the seen.

FAITHFUL IN LITTLE

And the test God sets before us is not greatness but faithfulness in little. He that is faithful in that which is least, the Lord said, is faithful also in much, and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. The small faithfulness is the true measure of the soul, and the gateway to the greater. We despise the small task, the small obedience, the small duty of the ordinary day, and long instead for some great work to do, and so we miss the very thing God has given us, which is to be faithful in the little that is actually before us. Great things are made of small faithfulnesses, and the soul that will not be faithful in the little would not be faithful in the great, though it imagines it would.

This is the word that will meet the faithful servant at the end, and it is worth hearing now. Well done, thou good and faithful servant, the Lord will say; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. A few things. The commendation is not for greatness but for faithfulness over a few small things, and the reward is the enlargement that faithfulness in little always earns. The whole of a life may be spent in a few small things faithfully done, and heaven will call it well done.

THE LONG FAITHFULNESS IN A SMALL PLACE

The hidden life is, by its very nature, a day of small things. It is unseen, unremarkable, made up of small daily obediences that no one observes and no one applauds, the quiet prayers, the little denials of self, the ordinary faithfulness of an ordinary day repeated without witness. And the temptation of such a life is precisely to despise it, to feel that because it is small and hidden it is worth little, and to crave instead some large and visible service. But this is to misjudge where God works. The mustard seed grows in the dark. The leaven works unseen. The kingdom advances, more often than not, through the long faithfulness of hidden souls in small places, and heaven watches what earth never notices.

For the eyes of the LORD are on the small work, and this is the promise hidden in the verse. They shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel, God says, the builder’s small tool marking out the modest walls, and then he adds, they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth. The eyes of God are upon the small building. The Lord himself watches the plummet in the hand, attends to the little work the world despises, for it is being done by his Spirit, and not by might nor by power but by his Spirit the small thing accomplishes what all human force could not. The small work watched by God is greater than the great work watched only by men.

HE WHO BECAME SMALL

The deepest reason not to despise the day of small things is that the King himself came small. The Lord of glory, by whom all things were made, entered the world not in splendor but as an infant, laid in a manger because there was no room, born to a poor mother in an obscure town. He grew up as the carpenter’s son in Nazareth, a place so despised that men asked, can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? He worked with his hands at a common trade for the greater part of his years, unnoticed by the great and the powerful, and when he began his work he chose fishermen and taught in villages and touched the least and the lowest. God, becoming man, chose the day of small things for himself.

The apostle traces the whole descent. Being in the form of God, he made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He who was greatest became least, he who was highest went lowest, emptying himself of his reputation and glory to take the smallest and lowliest place. And on the last night he girded himself with a towel and washed his disciples’ feet, the task of the lowest servant in the house, the God of heaven kneeling at the feet of fishermen. He did not despise the small and the lowly. He became it.

So the hidden life of small things is not a lesser and second-rate discipleship, to be endured while we long for something greater. It is conformity to a Lord who was himself small and hidden and lowly, who spent thirty quiet years in an obscure town before three public ones, and who counted the small task and the least person worthy of his whole attention. To live faithfully in a small and hidden place is to walk where he walked, to take the low room he took, to find him precisely in the smallness the world despises.

And his own kingdom he made in the image of his own smallness, a mustard seed, a little leaven, a flock he called little, growing not by the might of the great but by the hidden working of the small. The soul that has learned to love the day of small things has learned to love the way of its Lord, and will not be ashamed of a life the world overlooks, knowing that the Lord of that life was himself overlooked, and made the overlooking the very manner of his glory.

So do not despise the day of small things, in your work or in your soul. Do not despise the small beginning, the small grace, the small progress that seems so little beside the glory you had hoped for. Do not despise the hidden life of small daily obediences, nor crave the large and the visible over the faithful and the small. Be faithful in that which is least, for it is the measure of the soul and the gateway to the much. The mustard seed grows in the dark, and the eyes of the LORD are upon the plummet in the hand. Who hath despised the day of small things? Not God. Do not you despise it either.