"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.

“Habits of Grace” by David Mathis

He hasn’t written the definitive book on the spiritual disciplines, David Mathis writes in his introduction to Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus Through the Spiritual Disciplines; that was not his intention. Instead, he says, this book is an introduction, relatively brief, aimed at helping “Christians young and old simplify their approach to their various personal habits of grace.” 

That’s what he calls spiritual disciplines – habits of grace. And he describes three overarching principles or habits of grace: hearing God’s voice (his word); having God’s ear (prayer); and belonging to his body (fellowship). 

We’re not talking high-flown theology here. We are talking the basic stuff of the Christian life, habits and practices associated with Christianity since the time of Jesus.

Study. Prayer. Fellowship.

Mathis details each of the three habits with simple, accessible things you do, and can do. For example, for study, he explains why it’s important; how to read the Bible; how to meditate passages, themes, and ideas; the role of memorization; and how to do this for the long haul. For prayer, he explains the joy of this “gift;” how to pray; and the roles that fasting and keeping a journal can play. And for fellowship, taking the broad definition (it’s more than coffee and potlucks), he describes the fire of corporate worship, what we should listen for form the pulpit; the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and even the role of rebuke. 

It’s the simple bedrock of the Christian life.

Mathis has co-authored and co-edited several books with theologian and scholar John Piper, including Finish the Mission, With Calvin in the Theater of God, Cross, The Romantic Rationalist: C.S. Lewis, The Pastor as Scholar & The Scholar as Pastor, Thinking Loving Doing, and Acting the Miracle. He serves as executive editor of desiringGod.org, is a pastor at Cities Church, and is an adjunct professor at Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Habits of Grace is full of simplicity and full of wisdom. We don’t need advanced degrees to understand, experience, and practice God’s grace. What we do need is study, prayer, and fellowship.

Top photograph by Kirill Pershin via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Every Little Thing” by Deidra Riggs

We live in an age of brittle celebrity. You can become famous for, well, being famous. Some of the most popular shows on television are aimed at catapulting unknowns into stardom, and while these shows may be about the people we see on the stage, we know it’s really about us. You don’t publish a book, a play or a song without a pre-existing platform, and in the circular reasoning of book publishing, you gain a platform by first being famous. And what is the evolution of prayer books and rosary beads to smart phones if nothing else but a search for personal meaning? We have all become journalists and photographers and our subjects are ourselves.

The Christian community is marginally in a better place but not immune, although one could argue we should be. Mega-church pastors become Christian celebrities; some Christian authors sell books simply by putting their names on the covers. And we buy and consume according to Christian fads, trends and what’s hot at the moment, much like our secular cohorts do. And perhaps we wonder if only Christian celebrities are the ones who can accomplish the big things for God.

And then comes along a book, a small book, a book about the small things, the little things, the small steps, the people whose names will never be plastered across a mega-church marquee, a book that says what we Christians know to be true: it’s not about who you are, or how big your following, or how big your platform, or how recognizable your name is in George Barna’s polls. It’s about your willingness to serve right where you are, because God doesn’t care how famous you are.

“Most of us will make a difference in this world,” writes Deidra Riggs in Every Little Thing: Making a World of Difference Right Where You Are, “but not because of some grand or large-scale initiative. No, most of us will change our corner of the world and make an impact that stands the test of time through the small and seemingly insignificant (to us) interactions and decisions and conversations of our average days. We make a difference where we live, and incrementally, that place begins to shift (emphasis added).”

Deidra Riggs

The lady knows of what she speaks. She writes from life experiences – jumping from an airplane, the chopping down of a beloved cherry tree, fear of the water (as in ocean), moving from a comfortable Philadelphia suburb to what looks like the end of the earth (flyover country, aka Nebraska), a baby daughter rushed to the hospital. She ties each life experience to Scripture, and she does it in a conversational way, a real way, like you’re sitting with her at the kitchen table and she is telling you her story and it turns out to be your story at the same time.

Riggs is a writer and editor, and she’s also the wife of a pastor. That move to Nebraska? Her husband accepted a position at a church in Lincoln. Initially, things didn’t go well, whether it was the mice in the pantry or parishioners leaving the church with no explanation. She will tell you, and she does: she was miserable, and kept questioning herself, her husband, and God. Seven years passed before she reached the point she did when riding her bike one day: “This is good.” And she could see what God had seen – the difference she and her husband would be making.

Every Little Thing is more than a good book. It’s something that even many Christian books aren’t: it is a true book. It is the experience and wisdom of one woman speaking our common language of the heart, our common language of faith.

Photograph by Lode Van de Velde via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.