05-08-16 Too Busy to be Faithful in the Small Things

Before I forget, let me make sure to wish all of you out there a Happy Mother’s Day!

The teens did a wonderful job of leading our worship service this week, which means that I had no responsibilities whatsoever.  Actually, that’s not entirely true -- I did come up and pray with our graduates (Kate and Dougald MacDougall) alongside Sara Stewart.  But that was pretty much it for me.

So Dougie read the announcements, and Kate, Anna, Alex and Stephen joined the Worship Team (the girls sang and the boys played instruments alongside Michael, Richard, and Mark).  Decurione read the Scripture for the morning, Alex led us in the pastoral prayer, and Sara shared the message for the morning.

Interestingly, Sara had been struggling all week with what to teach on.  She had a basic idea, but she and I had several discussions where she just didn’t feel like she was quite on the right track.  Once Saturday rolled around, she went to the church building, lay down in the Sanctuary, and prayed for about half an hour... and God laid on her heart more the direction that He’d been intending all along.  Believe me -- as a pastor, I’ve experienced that sort of a preparation week all too often over the years.

But what that meant was the Sara got to be her own sermon illustration.  She spoke on being “Too Busy to Be Faithful in the Small Things” in life -- that, like Martha, we can sometimes get so caught up in what we think is important that we miss what God thinks is important.  And the truth is, to God, nothing is really a “small” thing.  She gave us the example of Christ’s parable on the servants who were given talents of money to invest by their master.  When he returned, he responded exactly the same way over a five talent increase as he did over a two talent increase -- because it wasn’t the amount that gave him joy, but the obedience in seemingly “small” matters.  The servant who did nothing but try to maintain what he already had was a failure not because of his lack of increase, but because of his lack of faithfulness as a steward.

So what has God entrusted to you and me today?  What resources, what responsibilities, what opportunities?  If you’re a parent, how do you live that out on a daily basis, as an act of worship to God?  If you’re not a parent, how do you invest yourself in others on a daily basis, as an act of worship to God?

If you’re faithful in the small things, you can be trusted with great things.  Then again, as missionary Hudson Taylor once wrote, “A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in little things is a great thing,” in and of itself...