Small Beginnings
Margaret Kiser
Just before the beginning of the new year I came across a quote that said, “It’s not a new year if nothing changes, it’s just another year.” At the same time, I saw an advertisement claiming that most resolutions last until the second Friday of the new year. Thankfully for you and me, the answer to this problem was the “extra motivation” they were selling. We have all dealt with change, and might even be in agreement that change is hard. Catchy slogans like “new year, new me” sound so good, but the motivation needed often runs out way before the fireworks and countdown of the next year. Why is change so hard? Why do we struggle to make needed changes, even small ones, especially when it comes to our spiritual growth and the spiritual growth of our family? Could it be that expecting too much too soon causes us to view small progress as worthless and tiny beginnings as a waste of time? Has the cultural shout of “go big or go home” drowned out the quiet encouragement of God’s word, reminding us not to despise the small beginnings that the Lord rejoices to see? (Zechariah 4:10.)
This year I decided that I wanted to learn to make sourdough bread. The process seemed easy enough so, full of hope and excitement, I added flour and water to a jar, stirred and waited. The things that I read told me to mark where the starter was in the jar (kind of like marking a child’s height on a doorframe) so I could see growth between feedings. I am not sure what I expected each time I threw some of the starter away and added additional flour and water but, from my perspective, absolutely nothing was happening. My impatience was making the sourdough experience frustrating, not at all like the fun hobby I had imagined. After a week and half, the goo in the jar had a few bubbles. Then, after almost two weeks, it almost grew right out of the jar. I now have something to bake bread with, not actual bread, but the beginning of bread.
My sourdough starter reinforced to me how much I hate slow progress and small beginnings. But as much as I don’t like to admit it, slow progress is still progress and a small beginning is the beginning of something. It made me think of the families in my church. Often in a weekly email, I send out articles encouraging families to spend time in family worship and resources that might make it just a little bit easier. I don’t have children, besides the ones that I get to send home with their actual parents at the end of the church activity, but I think parents are rock stars. Every Sunday morning or night or Wednesday that parents walk into the church with their children relatively on time and with clothes and shoes on, they should get a medal (and maybe a parade). I wonder if what these parents actually need to hear is that a small beginning and tiny progress is something that should be celebrated and not despised. What if your family read one Bible verse each night around the dinner table? What if you worked on memorizing one Bible verse a month as a family? How would listening to hymns or Bible verse songs in the car on the way to basketball games impact your family? What if you worked your way through the Children’s Catechism doing one question a week? These are small beginnings that honor the Lord and trust His faithfulness to do the work in our families that often we can’t even see. But like small bubbles forming on the bottom of my sourdough starter, the growth we desire for ourselves and our families might lay just on the other side of a small beginning.