All that matters after all

Small.

His small dark hand reaches toward my face and strokes my cheek. What have I done to deserve this affection? Nothing more than squatting down to his level on the floor and offering a smile. Small.

I've spent a fair amount of my time here fighting to not feel small. For what I am doing to not be insignificant. I want the difference I am making to be anything but small.

I am learning that small things can make all the difference. Dying head bandages different colors. Drawing faces on balloons. Cutting a door and windows in a large cardboard box then serving brothers water through the window of their fort. 

Actually, I've spent a lot of my life not wanting to feel small. I wondered if these small things are enough. So I took off to Kampala, Uganda to do pediatric heart surgeries with a team from home for two weeks. (Many stories for another post, another day) And there I realized just how small I actually am.

I thought that something more intense and life-saving would make my impact bigger. That's where I was wrong; it's not about me, or anything I am doing. I was faced again with the limitations of medicine in a third-world country. Where small things we take for granted (fresh blood in the blood bank, electricity, routine medications, diapers) can make significant impact on the outcome of the patient.

I was reminded that it doesn't matter what I am doing, or where I am doing it for that matter, that all the small things I have been called to are to point to the One who is not small. The One who has not created insignificant people or insignificant tasks.

Before Him I long to be small. And when I become weary from the small tasks or my heart is heavy with the accumulation of small despairs, I do know His grace and love know no limits, He has promised to renew and restore us, to strengthen us when we are weary and give grace to us when we fall short.

"Who shall stand before Him? Our works, alas, are all in vain, in much the best life faileth. No man can glory in your sight, all must alike confess your might." Psalm 130 

Before Him I am small.

"So Small" - Carrie Underwood