A box came in the mail the other day. It was a surprise free gift from the local power company. Or I should say two free gifts.

The power company sent every one of their customers a new “low flow” showerhead, designed to cut down on water usage, but still feel like a real shower. The second free gift was four of those new curly-q fluorescent light bulbs, the kind that last longer and use less electricity while putting out the same amount of light. This small act cost the power company a few thousand dollars. But according to their figuring, in the long run if everyone replaced their showerhead and a few light bulbs, the savings would be in the tens of thousands of dollars. It was a small act, but it was a start to a big savings.

Small is big. From architectural trends like “The Not So Big House,” to backyard food sources (“Fresh Food from Small Spaces”), to down-size is the new up-grade. In fact, down-sizing has become a big business.

Not too long ago only a few hippie-holdout co-op markets offered a small selection of scruffy-looking “organic” fare for the few “fresh-niks” among us. Now just about every big super-market offers about as much space to certified “organic” produce as they do for the other options.

Did you know you can buy all sorts of other “organic” products — ketchup, frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese mixes? What started out looking like a small and stunted sideline has become a major force in the food industry.

God has an MO: Modus Operandi. God’s MO is to start small. God loves starting small, and then from small beginnings grow something amazing. From cosmic dust to a Big Bang? The next time you consider taking a sip from a fresh, cold mountain stream, remember how much the divine delights in single-celled organisms. There are millions of them floating in one glass of water. Consider how there are more insects than any other class of critters and more beetles than any other kind of insect, each fitting neatly into its particular ecological niche.

Jesus carried on the family tradition. Jesus had a fascination with all things small and humble.

Mustard seeds
Sparrows
Grains of wheat
Yeast
Pennies
Sprouting seeds
Hebrews
Children

And in today’s text from John, the remnants of a little boy’s lunch box.

There is an old German proverb that admonishes “You can’t make bread from crumbs.” Try telling Jesus that. The whole message of the kingdom, the note Jesus kept hitting, the message he kept storying, the sermon he kept physically demonstrating, is this one: “Start small.” And in this morning’s text from John, Jesus’ response to that proverb “You can’t make bread out of crumbs” is to promptly make dinner for 5000 out of exactly that.

Scraps, and bits, and garbage, and leftovers, and crumbs: those are the building blocks of the kingdom of God.

Think about it. How much smaller, or crumbier, could the kingdom of God have started? First with a tiny baby, born in a tiny town, in a tiny country. Then Jesus stayed a small-town boy almost all his adult life, calling a ridiculously small band of discards to disciple and disperse the biggest, most revolutionary news the world had ever received.

Jesus knew that small inputs could have massive consequences. A child’s sharing of a few tidbits of bread and fish enabled Jesus to feed five thousand hungry people. And not just a morsel for those hungry followers, but a full, satisfying meal . . . with twelve baskets full of leftovers.

Those leftovers were important. Leftovers weren’t discards. They were the continuation of Jesus’ miracle. Jesus carefully cautioned his bus-boy-disciples to “gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost” (6:12). No, this wasn’t an exercise in frugality or an early example of recycling. This ingathering of the bits and pieces was an attention to detail — and God is in the details.

But hell is in the details too. Little things matter, those little things we do and those little things we leave undone. For every moment we miss the opportunity to do something small but right, the small but wrong won’t hesitate to move in.

A smile directed at a neighbor can offer a fragment of the kingdom.

A frown or blank stare invites the seed of another sort to settle in — the seeds of suspicion, hostility, disregard.

God is not calling us to save the world. Jesus did that for us.

But God is calling us to make small saves, to share shards of the grace we have been given to all those we encounter, in all the actions that we take. Your life has “saving power,” but your saving power is not in the big things but in the small things. Your saving power is in the small saves.

Planting a garden is a small save but it can bring great joy to all who watch it grow and enjoy its bounty.

Delivering a meal to someone who cannot get out is a small save, but the offering of food and friendship can bring nourishment to both body and spirit.

Reading to a kindergarten class is a small save, but it can build connections between generations.

Taking the money you would spend on a coffee drink once a day for a month and giving it to a community food bank is a small save, but it can mean the difference between feeling fed and cared for or hungry and abandoned for a struggling family.

Paul Tillich reminded us that the only way we have to the universal is through the particular. Our lives are comprised of an accumulation of “particulars,” of small things, of small saves that make huge impacts. These “particulars” or “small things” can be the individual bricks that help us build a strong foundation of faith. Or these “particulars,” these “small things” can be a daily chipping away at the bedrock of our confidence and trust. Small shoves can create a bandwagon . . . . for good or for evil.

Anyone who has ever done home maintenance knows that attending to small things keeps big problems from breaking in and cropping up. Studies have shown that it is a lot easier to mow the lawn once a week than to try and whack down the jungle of a month’s worth of growth. Pruning a few dead branches is a lot less work than removing them from the middle of the dining room window. Feeding the bacteria in the septic tank is a lot cheaper than paying to have a cesspool pumped out of the yard.

Here are some possible “small saves” for this coming week…your offering to Jesus of some little loaves and fish for him to make large.

Really listen to your children’s lives when they are five…It will make it easier to talk to them when they are fifteen.

Find a way to be a good neighbor…It will help bring a sense of blessedness and belonging to your entire community.

Share grace with others…It will boomerang an abundance of grace back into your own life.

Make peace with one…It will grow peace among two.

Start seeing the sacred in the tiny…Then you’ll start to see the sacred in all the world.

Do you know why “small saves” are so important. Because everything matters. There are no leftovers, or crumbs, or throw-aways. Everything matters. I repeat: everything matters in the kingdom of God.