Big Prayer, Big God. little prayer, little god.
To be little with God is to be little for God. | E.M. Bounds
My daughter loves for me to read books to her over and over. I often get bored with the books after a few reads , but to her the stories seem to never grow old. The stories, pictures, and characters consistently capture her attention. One of the books she has been addicted to lately is “The Biggest, Best Snowman” by Margery Cuyler. The story is about a Little Nell and her Big Family who continually remind her that they are BIG and she is little, after-all her name is Little Nell and their names are Big Mama and Big Lizzie. Little Nell goes outside to be with her forest friends who eventually convince her that she is big enough to accomplish big things, like building a snowman instance. So they help her build the biggest, best snowman there ever was and they show it off to Little Nell’s big family who are quite impressed and start to see her as Nell who isn’t so little anymore. The book shows you that even though you may be little you can do big things. This overly optimistic kids story got me thinking about how this big and little concept relates to prayer.
Prayer is really a very little thing in the realm of things we can do for God. At least, it seems that way. If we’re being honest, compared to the things we have to do on a daily basis, praying seems like a little waste of time. After-all, What good has talking out loud in a room by yourself done for anyone? It’s not like the hand God has ever been moved through a person’s words hurled up to the clouds? What good could such a little person do? These are feelings that so often surround our prayer lives. Feelings of hurry and waste. Let’s hurry through this prayer so I can eat my food and let’s not pray too long because we don’t want to waste time for our meeting. Let’s forgo prayer because we have a lot to get done today. After-all, God is very big and we are very little; so whats the use of praying?
Except, I got to thinking about all of my objections and misunderstandings about the nature to prayer especially as it relates to the concepts of Big and Little. You see if we truly believed that God is very BIG and we are very little, then we would actually pray MORE not less. Unfortunately, we believe our lives to be very BIG and God to be very little. Our life and our time table and our to-do list are the biggest things on our mind, but talking with the God who holds all of those things in the palm of his hand, is of little importance to us.
Martin Luther said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”
What if we actually lived out what we said we believe? We sing, preach, and pray about how big our God is. Yet, we live like we’re the BIG MAMA and God is the Little Nell. We are the creator and God is the creation. But we have go it all backwards and upside down. This year I want my prayer life to reflect what I actually say I believe about my God. I don’t want my life to reflect the words of E.M. Bounds, “Little with God is to be little for God,” but rather I want to be much with God in order to be be much for God!
