Small Beginnings

In this holiday season, the theme of small beginnings has so been on my mind. Just over a week ago, I was with my sister for the birth of her first baby. As real as baby was while inside the womb, she came to us in a way we can now see – in a way we can experience her personality and interact in the everyday. Imagine this – JESUS CAME to us in this way. As a baby. So in-process in many ways – needing to grow and develop, learn and speak a language, have his mind expanded through input. Yes, He was GOD, but He humbled Himself to be ONE OF US. He was the most precious of small beginnings.

I think back on this year – all the workings of the Holy Spirit in me. The ways He’s grown and expanded me. And I’m SO thankful. But I also think of what John said – “It has not as yet appeared as yet what we shall be” (1 John 3:2). The evidences I see of the Spirit’s work in my life are only part of the “earnest”, which is just another small beginning of all God has ahead. It’s awesome to let our redeemed imagination dream of all that might be ahead. Whatever it is, it’s something our eyes haven’t yet seen, ears haven’t heard, heart has not conceived of (1 Corinthians 2:9). Think about it – the most minute details of your life, of your spiritual experience and growth (seen or unseen by you), are only tiny little seeds of something you can’t even imagine!

So, I want to encourage you to look back at your life this past year and find those alive small beginnings. Recognize them; take note of them. Thank God for them. A Father is intimately involved in your life. He is sowing in you, working with an earnest of His Spirit that will in the future be your glory in Him. Jesus said the Kingdom is at hand. It still is. The world of the unseen is real – more real than what we see. It will endure. And it is now. We may be stuck in time and space, but God’s Kingdom is in a realm that is timeless – a dimension that crosses into ours and is over and above all else. We need to open our eyes to this – to the trajectory of a REAL Kingdom. Heaven is open now – we can taste and live in it. Let us lift up our eyes to the King of Glory and treasure the earnest He is already multiplying!