"Dream Small" by Seth Lewis

Search for significance. Follow your passions. You’re the captain of your ship. You’re the author of your story. It’s all about you. 

The culture, and often even the church, constantly foster and reinforce these kinds of messages and belief systems. It’s no wonder we live in an increasingly atomized society of self-interested and (theoretically) self-sufficient individuals. These belief systems are reflected in our political parties, our schools, our literary and popular culture, and our traditional and social media. Our lives are, in effect saturated with these beliefs, and they’re so omnipresent that it’s difficult even to recognize them.

 

Seth Lewis has a suggestion: Dream small. 

 

“The world around you will constantly encourage you to follow your dreams,” he writes in Dream Small: The Power of the Ordinary Christian Life. “That’s not bad advice as fa as it goes, but I’m asking you to pause first, and take the time to ask an important question that often gets overlooked: just where, exactly, are your dreams leading you?” You need to aim your dreams, he says, and what consider what will you aim them at. His advice is to dream small.

 

Seth Lewis

His book is small, only 116 pages. But it packs a powerful wallop, because each succeeding chapter succinctly explains what it means to dream small. Size doesn’t matter. All of us, even the most famous and well-known, are a small part of a big story. That story is about life on an “upside-down ladder,” in which we’re tasked with helping. Small people (that’s all of us) dreaming small can result in a big effort, big value, and big success. Our significance lies not in what we accomplish but in who created us. That’s the story we’re a small part of.

 

Lewis, a native of the United States, lives with his family in southern Ireland, where he works with a number of Irish Baptist churches. He also blogs regularly at Seth Lewis.

 

It says something about us and our culture that a message that is the basic Christian message seems almost revolutionary. But these are times we live in. And the time is right – as it always is – to dream small.