Something interesting happened when IKEA, the Swedish-based retailer of furniture and house wares, opened stores in the U.S. There was a certain vase that the company couldn’t keep on the shelf. People were buying six or eight of them at a time. Finally, IKEA learned why. In the bigger-is-better American culture, this vase was being purchased as a drinking glass.
That story describes how I’ve often felt about faith. I keep striving for the Colossal Jumbo Super-Portion, thinking that’s the only way I’ll be able to do anything meaningful. Jesus, on the other hand, said that faith the size of a mustard seed is sufficient to move mountains.
Maybe it’s time for me to lower the bar on faith, and give up trying to conjure huge doses that I think will cure all terminal disease and bring about world peace. Instead, perhaps I should seek sub-seed amounts of faith; enough to believe that God Himself wants me to express concern for a friend’s situation, or to console someone who feels like they’ve messed up. I’ll probably never start a foundation to end international hunger, but do I have enough faith to give a bag of groceries to a struggling family and know that it was a true expression of God’s will?
I feel stirred to pray for faith… less of it.