Topics: Beginnings; Church; Faith; Humility; Ministry; Small Things; Vision
References: Zechariah 4:10; Mark 4:30–32; 12:41–44
Almost two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find the source of the Missouri River, and from there to discover a relatively easy water route west to the Pacific. Such a waterway, they discovered, doesn’t exist.
But they did succeed in mapping the Northwest. And fifteen months after pushing themselves upstream, they found the headwaters of the mighty Missouri River near the Montana-Idaho border: a tiny little rivulet, which a member of the expedition, Private Hugh McNeal, straddled, thanking God that he had lived to put one foot on either side of the mighty and heretofore deemed endless Missouri.
At its source, the Missouri looks a lot different from the powerful current that flows into the Mississippi River near St. Louis. Likewise, in the kingdom of God, many great things start out small.
—Marshall Shelley, “Broader Pastures, More Breeds,” Leadership (Fall 2000)