Faithful; Small

"The quest for enlightenment begins with faithfulness. Before David was king, he was a warrior. Before he was a great warrior, he was an obscure shepherd. Before Joseph became second only to Pharoah in the empire of Egypt, he endured the life of a slave. Before Ruth found a life filled with joy and promise at the side of Boaz, she endured the death of her first husband, but gave her life to serving Naomi, her mother-in-law. She chose faithfulness to the family of her deceased husband above her own pesonal good. It was only on this journey that she found the future God planned for her." -Erwin McManus

I continuously find my soul longing for more, longing to be more, to mean more, to make a bigger impact. I'm never settled with where I am, there is more to be done, there are bigger things to be done, there are always more ways to make a difference than I am able to get to. My soul aches for those things. I mentioned to a mentor of mine as I was leaving college that I constantly feel like a caged lion. A caged lion that is meant for the wild, meant to be free and to be what God had created it to be, but instead it is domesticated and fed what is nesseary and is not encouraged to hunt, to kill, and to eat as it pleases.

God has either blessed me or cursed me with a mind that doesn't stop working, always striving to be the person that God would have me become but also the person that God created me to be. And I always feel suppressed, in fact, when I told my mentor about my caged lion feeling he said "i'm pretty sure you'll always feel that way Jeff".

The tendency is to stop, stop moving forward, stop doing what you're doing until you get what you want or get placed where you need to be. The problem is that if you stop now, you'll stop later, because where you are will never be perfect. Jesus knew this. He gave us the parable of the talents found in Mathew 25. Jesus tells a story of servants that are given small yet different amounts of money and the two that come back with more are given more to be in charge of since they were faithful with the small amounts but the one that simply tended his money not to loose it returns the same amount because he just baby-sat it, he did not multiply it.

Most of us would take the small amount, look at it, and realize that we can't do much with it, we can multiply it but it won't multiply into much so we choose not to worry about it. With money, that doesn't really matter, its' your money you can do what you want with it. But how many of us are waiting for something to happen until we begin to "live well"?

I read an article by an author and he told a story of he and his wife. He wrote that they decided to only buy things for their house that would help create relationships with other people, so that they could show others who the real Jesus is. Sometimes we don't realize how faithful we can be with our Bar-B-Que.

In whatever you do, do it well, complete the mission. Look back on your life, examine the times that stand out as significant to you because of what someone else did for you, was that person being faithful in the small things? I'm going to guess they were. The point is that if you want to make a dent in this world, if you want to live in a way that when you are gone and people are reflecting on your life they see that you participated in the redemptive mission of our world instead of living a selfish life, start with where you are. Be faithful with your BBQ, be faithful with your car, get to know a family that struggles to make it financially and make sure they always have milk in their fridge and blankets on their beds. Because where you are is your mission, it's not where you're going.