As a mustard seed
By Job Bolier
For the first time since I began working here I had zero attendees, even after I had first gone from door to door. Some had other obligations, others were too busy. Absolutely no attendees at all. When I came home with slumped shoulders and briefly told my wife about this new disappointment, she wisely said, ‘Bow your knees.’ And then I became very small for a moment. Small before the great Re-Creator. There I could honestly say, ‘It is not my work, is it? If it is my work, then I deserve no fruit. But isn’t it Thy work, Lord?!’
Encouragement
I had begun with the Gospel of Matthew again with this class. At the end of last year I had arrived at chapter 16. And this has been such an encouragement! ‘Blessed art thou, (…): for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.’ So, I cannot and I do not have to do the work myself. Not in myself, not in others. Not flesh and blood, but the Father alone will do it… And, ‘upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ And that church was not even there yet!
Become as a mustard seed
After that scheduled Bible class, I struggled through chapter 17. ‘Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’ And those words touched me! Faith as a mustard seed. Often I had thought of it as little faith. But now I saw the words in a different light. I myself must become as a mustard seed. John the Baptist said, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ Or – as I read further in Matthew – in the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ Paul also wrote it to the Galatians, ‘For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.’
the lesson
A grain of mustard seed, that bears fruit. Small in itself, but leaning and relying on a great Savior. Not missionary workers who will fix it, but small, powerless beggars. ‘The filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things.’ The Lord teaches that lesson, sometimes at the most undesirable moment. So that – precisely then – we are able to acknowledge once again, ‘It is blessed to become nothing in the hands of an all-powerful God.’
