Starting Small

Dave Brisbin 12.6.20 If you want to find something hidden by a child, how do you do it? After you’ve searched all over the house, you get on your knees, lower your point of view to three feet off the ground and see all the spaces you won’t see from standing height. And if you want to find the truth hidden in Christmas? Even from standing height, all the details of Christmas point to Jesus starting small. Not just a helpless infant like any other, but also an abjectly poor one, invisible to those fixated on the big and powerful. There are no random details in scripture. Every detail is there on purpose, and if we want to know what was hidden in Christmas by the infant Jesus, we need to get on our knees, lower our point of view to see the truth that can guide us through every moment of our lives. And the truth is, as in all the metaphors Jesus used to point to Kingdom—his overall metaphor for the quality of life and consciousness that is full connection with God’s spirit—small things can have huge effects. The mustard seed buried in the soil, the leaven hidden in the flour, the gardener who shows up to unseen work each day with no control over the seeds themselves, the child, the Hebrew bride—all point to humble, vulnerable, unremarkable beginnings of the largest and most critical parts of life. Jesus and all of scripture are pointing us to this truth. If we want to live the quality of Kingdom, we need to be willing to start small, but even as we grow, never lose the quality of smallness because Jesus’ Kingdom can only and ever be lived from three feet off the ground. Jesus started small, born a child who never outgrew the childlikeness that allowed him to create Kingdom wherever he went. Jesus never grew out of his smallness. We need to grow back in. That’s a Christmas story we can live every day.