The first thing to learn from this parable relating to feeling small and insignificant is, that you are neither small nor insignificant, because you are using what you have been given to honor the Lord. God sees it, and He sees you as important, valuable, significant. Therefore, in prison, the Apostle Paul was a success and doing a significant work.  He was in prison for having been faithful, and he was faithfully serving God in his activity while in prison.

Recently I was thinking about this, working through it, and thought it might be something with which others might appreciate help, as I was helped.

My wife and I had just returned from a transatlantic cruise, which involved visiting three countries and some major cities.

We saw a lot of people, a whole lot of people.

I have a blog with a limited readership, and to see all these people and think of my numbers, I felt like a grain of sand on the beach.

Maybe sometimes you look at social media or people in like professions as yours, and their private and professional lives seem way ahead of where you are, and you feel pretty small and insignificant.

In one sense, it’s good for us to see how small and even sinful we are, as when we come into the presence of God and see some of His glory and beauty. We need more times like this. And we need to end with praise for His love and forgiveness to us in Jesus Christ (Isaiah 6; Exodus 34:5-8; Luke 5:8,9).

And it’s also good when we see our smallness in how dependent we are upon the Lord, and that all of life needs to be approached with faith in Him, because without Him, we can do nothing (John 15:4,5).

But the experience of smallness and insignificance that I’m addressing here has to do with our wanting our work and activities to be meaningful. We want them to count. We want to be a help in the lives of others. We want to make a difference for Jesus Christ in His world while He has us here.

This week, as I was reading Colossians, I thought of the Apostle Paul writing it while he was a prisoner.

What was he doing? What was he thinking?

We know he was a very ambitious man, full of concerns and goals of all the things he’d like to do, people he’d like to help, and things he wanted to accomplish.

But what was he doing and thinking while a prisoner?

He wasn’t complaining about his circumstances (Philippians 4:11-13).  He wasn’t waiting for the perfect opportunity to tell people about Jesus.

Instead, he was keeping up his own worship of the Lord and walk with Him. He was telling the authorities holding him about Jesus, and, through them, hoping to reach others. He was regularly teaching those who came to visit him. He was writing letters to Christians elsewhere, to encourage and instruct them in the faith. He was being faithful in the vocation to which God had called him.

Now, remember, in Paul’s day, there were a lot of people in the world then, as well. So even though he was keeping busy, what he was doing really wouldn’t have seemed to be that significant in the grand scheme of things, in influencing multitudes of people for Christ.

And all this continued for quite a while; it wasn’t a week’s lock up.

I’ll come back to Paul in a minute.

If you came to me feeling small and insignificant, the first thing I would tell you is that it isn’t true, and that you are created in God’s image, and that’s pretty special.

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