Monthly Archives: October 2010

I Love a Good Story!

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Got a few minutes for a couple of stories?

The only thing I love better than hearing a good one is to be the guy telling it! That’s a rather unflattering admission, I fear, but completely accurate.

The first is a story from my son, of the time last Saturday when he stopped to help a woman who had a flat tire and almost killed her in the process. It’s almost funny–but not quite–and makes a good point that in helping people we must be careful not to do them harm.

The other story comes from a non-pastor friend who decided to insert himself into a conversation at a nearby table in the restaurant where he was having lunch.

Knowing how, as Robert Frost said, one road leads to another (meaning: one story makes me think of another), I will probably end up dropping in another tale or two before this is concluded.

Anyway, here’s what happened to my son Neil last Saturday morning.

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God Loves to Use the Small Things

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I put a note on Facebook this week to say I’m working on a sermon on this theme, based on Zechariah 4:10, “Who has despised the day of small things?” I asked the question, “What small things have you seen God use? Think of things I may have overlooked.”

The answers are still coming in. A song. A flower. A little boy’s lunch. A baby in a manger. A teenage mother. A star. A cup of water. A couple of coins in the offering from a widow. Mustard seed.

In the last year or two, I’ve written on this website a sermon on two on this subject. Without an index here to locate the myriads of messages, the only way I know to locate them is by googling something like “McKeever/Day of Small Things.” It should take you to the previous sermons on this blog.

That sermon–any sermon on the subject I would think–needs to point out that God loves to use:

–Small numbers. Jonathan told his armor-bearer (I Samuel 14:6) that it makes little difference to God whether He saves by the few or the many. Good reminder.

You and I know small churches that feel than can’t do anything because their members are few in number. Not so.

–Small people. The Apostle Paul suggested in I Corinthians 1:26ff that the members of that church look around. They would see not many celebrities, not many people the world acclaims as great or mighty or rich or gifted. God chose to use the nobodies of the world.

–Small gifts.No one illustrates this better than the boy who gave his lunch to Jesus and ended up feeding five thousand (John 6:9) or the widow who dropped her two coins into the offering and went on her way (Mark 12:42). Neither had any way of knowing what this meant to the Lord or that we would still be talking about them 2,000 years later.

Small moments.You prayed a prayer of commitment. You said “I do” at the altar. You decided to start reading your Bible. You went next door and invited your neighbor to church.

God loves to use small things. The thrust of what follows, however, is the implication of that for us. Mark it down in big letters and underscore it, the fact that God delights in using nothings and nobodies means a great deal to his children.

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