Big

Bedtime Theology with the 4 yo...   

4 yo: God is big.

Me: How do you know God is big?

4 yo: He made all the planets!

Children are very interested in size. They want to know how big something is, they want to tell you how big they are. My four-year-old has announced to me that he is a little big kid, not a big little kid. The order of the adjectives matters to him. My older kids try to cheat a little when we measure their height along the kitchen pantry wall. They stand on their tiptoes, eager to be just a bit bigger. 

This longing for big-ness, for more, for extra, seems to be part of human nature. See: the super-size menu at the McDonalds of my childhood. A quick Google search tells me that menu was discontinued in the early 2000s, but other "big" things have taken hold in the US cultural imagination. We want a bigger following on Instagram, bigger social media presence, bigger kitchens, bigger stores. A 2010 Time magazine article is titled: "Cars, Breasts and Homes: Why America Likes Big." The article argues that part of the focus on "big" is from the manifest destiny mentality of our founders - we came from far away to conquer and conquer big. You know this term: "Go big or go home."

Big is back in politics these days -- you might say YUGE, IT'S YUGE. America must be the biggest, strongest and richest. Big is back in religion, too. Church attendance is up in many parts of the country, where people worship a God who is increasingly more big, more powerful, more militaristic and more interesting in smiting enemies. God is BIG! 

Jesus was big, too. He had a YUGE following; everyone says he had the most followers. And at the end, he went big, and then he went home. 

And honestly, it was a big disappointment to a lot of political and religious people. Because if you're looking for Jesus to be really big, you will at some point be disappointed. Jesus was big, but he also liked the small, the least and the last. 

To what did Jesus compare the kingdom of heaven? Armies, empires, or vast fortunes? No, not one of these big things define the kingdom of God. God's kingdom is like yeast, like a mustard seed, like a pearl of great value, like a net (see Matthew 13). Elsewhere, Jesus tells of another big plan for a truly big harvest: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit (John 12:24). Jesus was big because he gave in such a big way. 

It's a blue-bird autumn day today. Golden-yellow birch leaves are falling in my yard, which will tumble to the earth and die, only to nourish other lives. Every year, someone on Facebook posts the meme about how the leaves are showing us how lovely it is to let things go. Maybe this is a good time to let go of a really big God and instead embrace God in the small things, God in acts of sacrificial love and service. 

Where have I seen the God of small things lately? One of my children helped another with his drawing. A friend offers to pick up my child from school. My four-year-old runs into my arms when I pick him up at preschool. My husband listens to my worries about my parents aging. Someone lets me merge in the middle school pick up lane. My middle schooler says that the first day of Confirmation class was "kinda fun." None of these things are YUGE, but all of them are little signs of the kingdom of God. I think small can be big. Really big.