The Last Word Wonder-full Life Who can say which tiny wonderful thing will shape our future and remake the world again?
2020 has certainly stamped its imprint on our lives and has focused the world’s attention on a very small thing. The coronavirus at the centre of the great disruption is as tiny as we can imagine yet look at how it has changed our world. It is challenging for most of us to stop and pay attention to the little things. The big and noisy things clamour for our attention: breaking news, fast-scrolling social media feeds, loud voices and eye-catching images. The quiet subtleties and soft whispers often carry the most important messages but go unnoticed by most of us. How many of us are bothered to notice bees, for example, until those who did pointed out that bee numbers were falling and threatening many of our food crops? Bees were just colourful visitors to clover patches, who might give you a nasty sting if you trod on one. We didn’t realise that they play a vital role in the food chain until there were not enough of them to do so anymore. They are more wonderful than we realised. Jesus told a story of a small thing with a big impact too: a mustard seed, among the tiniest seeds in the garden but which grows
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to be a home for birds and one of the largest plants in the garden (Matthew 13.31-32). Something easy for us to overlook again proves to be wonderful, and the whole world to the bird which nests in it. What a metaphor for the Reign of God: so subtle we easily overlook it, yet with the capacity to change, or make, our whole world. Some tiny things like viruses manage to grab our attention despite their small size. Others we have to search for when we discover just how much they matter. The Society of the Sacred Advent has always worked on the premise that paying attention to the small things ensures big changes in society. Educating girls, caring for vulnerable women, and planting the seeds of faith has left a legacy that has shaped not just the SSA Schools but every part of the world in which those students have lived. How wonder-full! Mustard seeds and seeds of faith remind us to stop and wonder at the small things in life. Who can say which tiny wonderful thing will shape our future and remake the world again? Reverend Gillian Moses Chaplain
