Whatever God's Kingdom may one day become, it starts out as the smallest of things. The great advances of the race have often started without any trumpets sounding or anybody being aware that anything exceptional was taking place. On the one hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, John McCutcheon drew a famous cartoon. He showed two Kentucky backwoodsmen standing at the edge of a wood in the winter. One asks the other, "Anything new?" The other man replies, "Nothing much. Oh, there's a new baby over at Tom Lincoln's. But you know, nothing significant ever happens around here."

Centuries before that someone might have asked in Bethlehem, "Anything new?" And the answer might have been, "No, nothing new. Oh, they say a woman named Mary had a baby in a stable last night. But nothing significant ever happens around here." And when that child grew up and taught, he taught about little things: a cup of cold water, a person with one talent, a widow's offering, a lost coin, kindness done for "one of the least of these." So many of the greatest happenings begin in just such a fashion. They are no more than the planting of a mustard seed. Yet, in God's good time, the seed becomes a plant and puts forth its branches for the benefit of all.