Does God Care About the Small Things?

Do you ever wonder if God cares about the small things? Is His perspective like ours? In today’s culture of mega cities, mega churches, and mega stores, we often equate size with importance. ‘Smaller’ suggests insignificance, maybe even worthlessness. After all, bigger is better. Or is it?

A few days ago, I played in the backyard with the newest member of our family, a two-year-old lab. Axel finally decided to plop down and roll in the grass. As I knelt beside him, I spotted tiny flowers growing between blades of grass. Did I mention they were tiny? Maybe the size of a tomato seed before opening and an apple seed when fully opened. Lavender edged each petal of the star-shaped flowers. The color deepened to purple around the center, with a dot of yellow splashed in the middle.

I picked a half dozen of these flowers, but what to do with them? They certainly wouldn’t fit in a vase. I remembered a silver thimble that belonged to my mom and filled the thimble with water. Voilà! A miniature flower arrangement on my kitchen windowsill. I looked at the little bouquet every time I walked by. Amazing! God had designed each flower with the same intricacy and detail as a lily twelve times its size.  

The same God who holds 200 billion trillion stars in the universe fashions exquisite flowers so tiny most of us never see them. Yet in God’s economy, small doesn’t equal less valuable. And those whom the world overlooks have inestimable worth to God. After all, He chose a young shepherd boy to become king of Israel. He used a lad with five loaves and two fish to feed over 5,000 people.

Psalm 115:13 declares “He will bless those who fear the LORD, The small together with the great.” This is good news! Sometimes we long to make a difference in our world, but by the time we help kids with homework, tackle a mountain of laundry, cook dinner, clean bathrooms, and visit our aging parents, we’re too exhausted to give more. We feel small and insignificant. But God sees us. And maybe it’s these small things we do faithfully day after day that God will use beyond our wildest imaginations. Who knows what a kind word to someone in the grocery line means to a heart? Or how our faithfulness to the tasks God has given will be used in the lives of those we touch?

Let’s not overlook or grow weary in the opportunities He gives us. God cares about the small things. He makes everything beautiful at the right time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). And one day, we will stand amazed at how He’s turned what seemed insignificant to us into something so beautiful we could never have imagined. To God be the glory!