I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much of life is built in really small moments. I think homeschooling has made me notice this more because so much of what I do with my girls every day can feel incredibly small. We practice one vowel, one sound, one number. Sometimes we go over the same thing so many times that I wonder if it is even sticking. Then one random day, they know it. Something that felt like it wasn’t going anywhere was actually building the entire time.
I think our lives with God are a lot like that.
We love the big moments. We love the answered prayer, the breakthrough, the opportunity we prayed for, the moment when we can finally look back and say, “Wow, look what God did.” But lately I’ve been wondering how many of those moments started with something so small that we almost didn’t think it mattered.
A few weeks ago, I was thinking about some of the sweetest things God has brought into my life and how ordinary some of their beginnings were. A conversation. Showing up somewhere. Sending a text. Saying yes to something I could have easily said no to. There was no way for me to know at the time what those little decisions would become.
Zechariah 4:10 says, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.”
I love the wording of that verse because it doesn’t say that the Lord only rejoices when the work is finished. He rejoices to see it begin.
I think sometimes I’m so focused on what I’m asking God to do that I overlook what He has already put in front of me to do. I want to know where something is going before I give myself fully to the beginning. I want to see the fruit while God is asking me to be faithful with a seed.
But a lot of our lives are lived in the seed part.
It’s reading your Bible this morning even if you don’t have some incredible revelation afterward. It’s praying again for the thing you have prayed about a hundred times. It’s reaching out to the person God keeps putting on your heart. It’s going for the walk, making the meal, sitting down with your child, working on the idea, having the conversation, or simply doing the next thing you know you’re supposed to do.
None of those things feel particularly impressive while you’re doing them. That’s probably why they can be so easy to dismiss.
But when I think about my girls learning to read, I know I would never look at one little vowel lesson and say it doesn’t matter simply because they can’t read a whole book yet. This is how they learn to read. The tiny lesson isn’t separate from the bigger goal. It is part of how we get there.
Maybe there are things in my own life that I need to see the same way.
Maybe I don’t need to know what this small act of obedience will become. Maybe I just need to be faithful with it today and trust that God sees the whole thing while I can only see this little piece.
So that’s my prayer this week: Lord, help me pay attention to the small things. Help me not become so consumed with what I’m waiting for that I miss what You’re doing right now. And when You put something small in front of me, give me the faith to believe that small does not mean insignificant.
Sometimes it’s just a vowel.
But then one day, they’re reading.
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