Hello and welcome to another Sunday on my blessings journey. Participating with me on this path are
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Andrew Kearney was an elementary school teacher at Danes Hill School, in the small village of Oxshott. Assuredly he’d seen his share of spitballs and endured plenty of disrespect, not all of which was from students, more likely than not. Maybe he even wondered some days–perhaps many days–whether his efforts were worth the trouble. Might he even have wondered at times if his life really meant anything? Those are questions we all ask, I think. Sometimes it all just feels so small, so inconsequential.
But here’s what Jesus had to say:
GNT Luke 16:10 “Whoever is faithful in small matters will be faithful in large ones; whoever is dishonest in small matters will be dishonest in large ones.”
But 1 day a small girl, his student, took his teaching seriously. Tilly Smith was on a Thailand beach on Dec. 26, 2004, when she noticed something strange about the ocean. It had lost its rhythm. It jarred her back to a lesson she’d learned just a couple weeks before in Mr. Kearney’s class. He’d showed a video about the 1946 tsunami in Hawaii and talked about the warning signs, specifically irratic ocean behavior. She warned her parents. A Japanese man recognized the word “tsunami” and told them he thought the girl was right–that there had, in fact, been a 9.1 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. The beach was cleared. Over 100 lives were saved that day. All because a teacher persisted in his efforts and taught the signs. All because a small girl had actually paid attention to a small town teacher in a small town’s school and persisted in warning her parents and others nearby. Small day-to-day acts that normally go unnoticed. But on that day, they didn’t. Perhaps saving 100 people seems pretty small in the face of 230000 souls disappearing from the planet as the result of events that occurred on a single day. But I suspect to those 100, as well as a small town teacher, it didn’t seem small in the least.
All we can do in our lives is plant seeds–seeds of love, and light, and joy, and peace, and other good things. And then hope to reap at least a little of the harvest we’ve sown. And who knows? Maybe in Heaven we’ll see the results–the answer to a prayer we whispered when we heard an ambulance siren; the prayers we offered earnestly for a family member in trouble, the value of our charity although it was small.
Matthew 31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
By Sanjay Acharya – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=905237
And here’s what comes out of that seed.
By Hopeoflight – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23670673
Meanwhile, I guess, even when it’s hard, persisting in the small things has important consequences. Thank you, Andrew Kearney and Tilly Smith for doing so.
Many blessings for your Sunday and throughout the week.