Small notes of grace
Nancy Kennedy
As a brand-new Christian in 1978, I confess that my newfound faith and zeal for Jesus was a bit obnoxious and overbearing at times.
People — especially my family — ran the other way when they saw me coming. My husband included.
I was the kind of new believer who quoted Bible verses at the dinner table and tried to turn every conversation into a salvation moment.
I didn’t mean to mess up the status quo. I just wanted others to know Jesus.
But with so many voices telling me I was wrong — that I was ruining my life and ruining the family — I started to doubt whether what I had experienced was real. So I decided I would stop believing, although I didn’t know how I would do that.
It’s not like returning a pair of pants that don’t fit.
One night my husband took me out for Chinese food. I remember sitting across the table from him, rehearsing in my head how I would say it — that I was quitting Jesus and going back to normal life.
As I was about to tell him, I cracked open a fortune cookie.
The message on that tiny slip of paper said: “Have faith in what you’re doing.”
To say that little message changed the trajectory of my life is not an overstatement.
Thank God for small things — like fortune cookies.
Lately, big things are happening in our world — too big to comprehend, let alone control.
Some say they’re signs of the end times: wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Lawlessness multiplied. The love of many grown cold.
That’s big. That’s scary. It’s the kind of thing that makes people wonder: Is God big enough to handle this?
Is God big enough to handle me?
God is big and mighty, and we go “oooh” and “aaah” at His miracles and wonders.
But He is also small.
He’s not the earthquake, but the whisper in the whirlwind.
He’s the God who leaves heaven, empties Himself by taking the form of a servant and becoming human.
He’s the baby in the manger who changes everything.
Whenever I’m overwhelmed by the bigness of the noise — and tempted to join the clamor and chaos, the gloom and doom — I take a breath and look for the small.
Just the everyday miracle of breathing — the involuntary act of filling my lungs so my heart can beat. God in my every breath. God in every beat of my heart.
God who sends a message of comfort and courage to a scared and uncertain young woman on the verge of walking away from her faith.
I often think about that fortune cookie. What if we had gone out for pizza instead of Chinese food? What if we had gone on a different day? What if I hadn’t opened the cookie at all?
But it did happen.
And it happens all the time — God making Himself small enough so we can see Him.
God who stoops to look upon us, as the psalmist wrote.
Big, serious and scary things are happening at a fast and furious pace every day.
But so are the small notes of grace.
Sometimes they arrive on a tiny slip of paper tucked inside a fortune cookie.Contact Nancy Kennedy at 352-564-2927 (leave a message) or email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.
