"There are many acts of great love that are great because they are massive, monumental, and earth-shattering.
"And some are great because they are incremental. Each small act adds up to something really spectacular.
"Small acts, great love" (p 35). Small acts are good enough to express great love.
Welcome to "the little way" of love.
In the late 1800s, Saint Therese - knowing that she would die at a tender, young age - wrote:
Love proves itself by deed, so how am I to show my life? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love (p 36).
I started writing this post three different ways, then deleted them all because nothing I could say would have made this simple truth any simpler; my words would have just gotten in the way.
Lord, help us "to remember that love isn't always in grand gestures or extravagant gifts, but in the small, faithful acts. Help [us] to remember it is in the showing up, in the work behind the scenes, in doing that which won't get us recognition. The one who is first in and last out. The generosity of time, resources, spirit. The one who leaves flowers in her wake.
"This is the long faithfulness that can change the world" (p 37).
Pastor Allison
I'm curious:
At the end of the chapter, Kate and Jessica refer to Galatians 5:4-6 -- here it is from "The Message" version of the Bible:
"I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love."
Those are two interesting sentences to put side by side (what I put in bold). Which do you spend more time thinking about, interior love or exterior love? Which do you feel more capable of? How do they work how in hand?
And I love the words of the Adam Lindsay Gordon poem they quoted:
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
KINDNESS in another's trouble,
COURAGE in your own.
What do those words mean to you?
