Mackie Shilstone is 5'8" and weighs only 137 pounds, but he trains some of the largest professional athletes in the countryfor example, pro basketball player Ralph Sampson, St. Louis shortstop Ozzie Smith, Will Clark of the Giants, Billy Hobbley of the Harlem Globetrotters. Mackie is not content just to train athletes physically. He wants to help change their lifestyles and ways of thinking as well. "I tell my athletes that they do have control over what their attitude will be about life. Their positive attitude and faith in God makes a difference."
"I have never forgotten the message on the medallion I received from (television pastor) Dr. (Robert) Schuller," he says, "which had this inscription: When faced with a mountain, I will not quit! I will keep on striving until I climb over, find a pass through, tunnel underneath or simply stay and turn the mountain into a gold mine with God's help!" (1)
This morning we are celebrating mustard seed faith. Jesus compared the kingdom of God to a mustard seed. He called it the tiniest seed on earth but when it grows up, it is taller than any of the other plants in the garden with branches so large that the birds of the air can make their nests in its shade. On another occasion he told his disciples that if they had as much faith as a grain of mustard seed, they could say to a sycamore tree, "Pluck yourself up by the roots and plant yourself in the sea and it would obey." (Luke 17:6) Obviously there is more power to faith than you or I may have ever imagined.
There are three elements of mustard seed faith that we want to consider this morning. These are also three important elements to successful living.
I. The Celebration of Little Things
First of all, mustard seed faith is the celebration of little things. Michelangelo, one of the world's great artists, was also a great sculptor. One day a visitor was looking at a statue that Michelangelo was making. The visitor said, "I can't see that you have made any progress since I was here last time."
Michelangelo answered, "Oh, yes, I have made much progress. Look carefully and you will see that I have retouched this part, and that I have polished that part. See, I have worked on this part of the statue, and have softened the lines here."
"Yes," said the visitor, "but those are all trifles."
"That may be," replied Michelangelo, "but trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle."
Successful people are aware of the trifles. As a Ethiopian proverb puts it: "When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion." The great writer Bruce Barton once said, "I am tempted to think there are no little things."
One of the turning points in World War II was the Battle of of the Bulge. Historians point out that it was really not one big battle but a multitude of smaller battles, fought out along the Allied lines. In his book, World War II, James Jones describes these battles like this: "No one of these little road junction stands could have had a profound effect on the German drive. But hundreds of them, impromptu little battles at nameless bridges and unknown crossroads, had an effect of slowing enormously the German impetus...These little diehard ˜onemanstands,' alone in the snow and fog without communications, would prove enormously effective out of all proportion to their size." (2)
That is how wars are won. That is how great businesses are built. I like what John L. McCaffrey former president of International Harvester once said, "The mechanics of running a business are really not very complicated when you get down to essentials. You have to make some stuff and sell it to somebody for more than it cost you. That's about all there is to it, except for a few million details."
Those few million details spell the difference between success and failure. That is true in a war, in business and it is true in shaping a life. It is the little things that mount up in consequence. The time spent with our children. The firm handshake and the gentle smile. The extra attention to the nuts and bolts of our job. In the long run these are the things that count.
From a negative side, little things matter as well. It is not the major sins that bring about our downfall. President Reagan loves to tell the story of a lady who knocked on a man's door and said, "Do you own a black Pit Bull dog?" The man said, "Yes." Well, the lady said, "I have to tell you it's dead. " The man demanded, "What do you mean it's dead?" "What happened?" And the lady said, "My Pekinese killed it." And the man said, "Your Pekinese killed it? How?" She said, "It got stuck in his throat." That's gross, I know. But it is so often "the little foxes who destroy the vines."
As an unknown author expressed it,
Great events we often find,
On little things depend,
And very small beginnings
Have oft a mighty end.
The gospel itself is a rather unique celebration of the seemingly small and insignificant. Carl Sandburg told of two men exchanging gossip in a general store in Hardin County, Kentucky, one day in February, 1809. "Anything happen over the last week?" one asks. "No," answers the other, "nothing's happened. Oh, except there's a new baby down to Tom Lincoln's house. A boy, I think." That baby boy grew to be America's greatest president.
Bethlehem was a small town. Nazareth was too. Calvary was a tiny spot on the globe. There was nothing particularly significant about the profession of carpenter or fisherman or taxcollector. The tiny mustard seed planted 2,000 years ago by Jesus and his disciples must have shown little promise. Life is like that. Look to the trifles, the little things, the overlooked details of life. Mustard seed faith, first of all, celebrates the importance of little things.
II. The Importance of Attitude to Accomplishment.
I like the perspective of an old New England farmer who cleared his land of the rocks that covered it. With those rocks he built a rock fence that was three feet high and four feet wide. When someone asked him why the unusual dimension, three feet high and four feet wide, he said that he built it that way so that if the wind blew the fence over it would be taller than ever before. I like that! That farmer was not going to be defeated no matter what. Life is a matter of attitude. As John Milton once put it,
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."
This is true in a hospital ward. Sudies show us that patients who have cheerful feelings about impending surgery recover faster from the operation. Those who express fears about postsurgical discomfort not only report more pain but also take longer to recover. Doctors can reduce hospital stays by asking patients about their fears and counseling them.
That is also true in nursing homes. In a remarkable study, fiftyfive individuals were interviewed as they were being admitted into a nursing home. They were asked how much freedom they had in coming to the home, how many other options were available to then, and how much coercion relatives had applied to get then to enter.
Seventeen individuals indicated that they had no alternative but to reside in the nursing home. Of this group, sixteen were dead within ten weeks. But for the thirtyeight who saw an alternative to nursinghome care, there was only one death in that period. (3) Attitude makes a difference.
Tony Campolo in his book, Who Switched the Price Tags?, gives us a beautiful example of the kind of attitude that accompanies mustard seed faith. He tells of Lord Chesterton who suggested that God got a childlike excitement out of His work. "As a matter of fact, he contended that God may be the only one left in the universe who has childlike emotions about work, while all the rest of us have grown old and cynical because of sin. God never tires of what He does. He enjoys it.
If you take a fiveyear old child, throw her into the air, catch her, bounce her off your knee, and then set her down on the floor, you can expect her to exclaim, "Do it again!" If you repeat the process a dozen times, the child will not tire of these antics.
Lord Chesterton believed that God may be that way about creating daisies. He asks us to imagine God creating the first daisy and enjoying it so much that something down inside Him exclaims, "Do it again!" And when he makes the second daisy, He is even more excited and shouts to Himself, "Do it again!" Imagine God continuing to create daisy after daisy, and after making the hundredbillionth daisy being even more filled with excitement than when He began. Obviously, this is an exaggeration but it makes no difference. The principle is what is validGod is a God who delights in what He does." (4)
We are created in God's image. Mustard seed faith says that this is a marvelous world in which God has placed us. It is an exciting and wonderful thing to be alive. We are fortunate when we can get up each morning and go to our schools, offices, fields and factories and share in the abundance of God's creation.
Take delight and be diligent in the little things. Understand the relationship between attitude and accomplishment, believing, and building, daring and doing. But one thing more.
III. We Are Not Alone. We are not alone in this universe. Here is the critical factor in mustard seed living. We are not alone. Life can be lived in more than one dimension. When Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God being like a tiny mustard seed, he wasn't talking about the wonderful abilities of man. Rather he was describing the availability of God. This is God's world and He is involved in it.
"If you would do the best with your life," British leader Arthur Wallis has said, "find out what God is doing in your generation and fling yourself into it." That is the ultimate key to successful living. God is alive and is at work in his world.
Quaker philosopher Rufus Jones once told a true story about a man who owned a summer cottage on the coast of Maine who was determined to start a Sunday School class for children who lived on a nearby offshore island. He sailed to the island in his boat, gathered the children together, and began to instruct them in matters of faith. Hardly knowing where to begin, he decided to start with something familiar to all the youngsters. The Atlantic Ocean surrounded their island. They saw it every day. He would begin with the Atlantic. He asked, "How many of you have ever seen the Atlantic Ocean?"
There wasn't a single responce. All the children stared at him blankly. Thinking they had not understood him, he repeated the question: "How many of you have seen the Atlantic Ocean?" No one spoke a word or raised a hand.
The visitor discovered, to his astonishment, that although the children had spent all their lives with the sound of Atlantic surf beating in their ears and with the vast stretches of the Atlantic spread before their eyes, they did not know its name. (5)
We hear about the Kingdom of God and we think only of some distant reality yet to manifest itself. There is that Kingdom to be sure. But there is another Kingdom, Jesus taught us, that is already here. If I may use the word guardedly, there is a "supernatural" Kingdom that already surrounds us. It is like treasure buried in a field, it is the pearl of great price. "Lo, it is in the midst of you." said Jesus. We are not alone in this world. Imagine the difference that makes.
Many of us were amused a few weeks ago to read about little DeAndra Anrig in Mountain View, California. According to the Associated Press DeAndra and her parents, who live in the East Bay community of Dublin, were picnicking with friends at the Shoreline park about 30 miles south of San Francisco and about two miles from the Palo Alto Airport. They were taking turns flying a glidertype kite with a 12 foot wingspan.
While it was DeAndra's turn, a plane descending for the airport snagged the line to Andrea's kite. "She said it was just a big jerk that lifted her into the air." said DeAndra's mother, Debby. "It carried her right over my husband's head. I'm just thankful she let go."
She let go after travelling about 100 feet and fell about 10 feet to the ground, leaving her with several bruises. Obviously that was a scary experience for little DeAndra. But there is something exciting about it, too. Who among us would not like to be lifted off of the groundto experience a new dimension to livingto believe that if we said to the oak tree out in our back yards "Pull yourself up and replant yourself in the bottom of the sea," it would happen?
Is that too strong a dose of possibility thinking for you? What then is the alternative? Shall we say with the cynics, "As things are, so shall they ever be?" This world will never be made better by realists. Only dreamers can go to the mountaintop and see a new tomorrow. And the amazing thing is that those new tomorrows do materialize. Look to the mustard seed. Big surprises come in little packages. Mountains are moved. Sycamore trees plucked up. And tired cynical folks like you and me are transformed-picked up off the ground to soar like eagles.
1. (POSSIBILITIES, Jan/Feb 1988, p. 6)
2. James A. Harnish WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH KING JESUS? (Nashville:The Upper Room, 1987).
3. Robert L. Veninga, A GIFT OF HOPE (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985).
4. (Waco: Word Books, 1986).
5. Harold E. Kohn, ADVENTURES IN INSIGHT (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans publishing Company, 1967).