I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas! I had a wonderful time, and even realized that is possible–and rather relaxing–to go over a week without opening your computer (as long as you’re on vacation)!  The bad side of that is that you’re getting this very timely guest post from the wonderful Tim about a week late. But hey, better late than never–and did I mention that I survived an ENTIRE WEEK without opening my computer?!

Small People – Who Isn’t?

Bear with me on this: South Korea’s Kim Jong Il and Dr. Seuss’s Horton the Elephant.

A couple nights ago I was reading Horton Hears a Who to a 4 year old. The 4 year old fell asleep about two-thirds of the way through; I read to the end. Horton is a huge elephant with huge ears that allow him to hear things the rest of us would miss, and so he hears a small voice coming from a tiny speck of dust. Horton realizes there is an even tinier person on that speck of dust and he decides to help by placing the dust speck on a dandelion to rest safely. After all, as Horton says, “A person’s a person no matter how small,” and his philosophy is that all people are entitled to help when they need it. Then he starts to carry on a conversation with the voice and learns there is a whole city of little folk who live in Whoville on that speck of dust.

The other animals, of course, can’t hear the Who’s so they accuse Horton of making it all up, acting crazy, so that all the other animals in the jungle look bad by his foolishness. They do everything they can to take away the dandelion and prevent Horton from carrying on this way. Horton does everything he can to help everyone in Whoville because, as he says again, “A person’s a person no matter how small.” Horton tells the Mayor of Whoville that the only way to get the other animals to stop their efforts is to let them to hear for themselves. So the Mayor gets everyone together to raise a ruckus and make the other animals understand. And they do.

The news of the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il made me think of Horton. Here’s why. Kim’s policies looked inexplicable to us. He seemed to desire a strong military presence at the expense of the strength of the people he was supposedly meant to protect. The economy is in tatters, sick people go without medical care and get sicker, children starve and die for it. It is hard to understand someone whose focus is so narrow, who appears so small minded, someone in a position to do something to benefit others and yet chooses to do things that accomplish nothing worthwhile.

The people around us do not have to be North Korean dictators for us to find their actions and motivations just as inexplicable. Any time I see someone do something counterproductive, I wonder why. And when it’s not just counterproductive but downright destructive, I wonder why the other person doesn’t see it too. So I chalk it up to small-mindedness: the person cannot think beyond their own little interests, or has a completely skewed way of looking at life. Sometimes this plays out on a large scale as when running a country or a multi-national corporation, and sometimes on a smaller scale in one-on-one interactions between people. Perhaps like me you’ve seen it at school or at work, on the highway or in the grocery store, when I find myself tempted to echo the Pharisee’s prayer in the temple: “Thank you God that I am not like those people.” Here’s the thing about those people though. Each of them is a person made in God’s image. And that’s when it hits me.

A person’s a person no matter how small.

Many people read Horton Hears a Who and assume Dr. Seuss wrote it as a way to look at children, and perhaps he did. Others read it and apply it to children in the womb, the most vulnerable people imaginable. Some may also read it as applying to anyone who is picked on, bullied, oppressed by those more powerful. And yet, I think it also applies to those who abuse their powerful positions of trust. Why? Because without Jesus, every one of us is small.

We’re dust:

“… for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19.)

We’re naked:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.” (Job 1:21.)

We’re low:

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9.)

And, in the same way as the dictators we revile and everyone else we see abuse positions of trust or authority, we’re small:

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” (Jeremiah 17:9.)

“The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 14:2-3.)

What does that mean for small people; in other words, what does this mean for us? Are we all forever trapped, imprisoned in our prisons of smallness? No, and here’s where God has brought my heart. Everyone is a captive, and every one of us needs freedom. Yet God has good news for us, wonderfully great news in fact:

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners ….” (Isaiah 61:1.)

Who is this that will carry out the will of our heavenly Father? After Jesus read this same passage about the promised Messiah (the anointed one), he did this:

“Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:20-21.)

Jesus assures us that he came to fulfill, and in fact fulfilled, God’s promise of freedom from the captivity of our own smallness, freedom from sin. How?

Paul later explained:

“Christ Jesus: Who, being in very natureGod, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very natureof a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:5-8.)

And here’s what his death achieved:

“… he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5.)

God the Son, Jesus the Messiah, who gave up his place of glory in heaven, became small in order to live among us, his creation, the people he loves, people made in the very image of God, in order to die for us who belong to him. Not only have we been set free, but we are also looking forward to sharing Jesus’ eternal glory, to be made great because he is great and he has given us himself:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! … God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, 21.)

But what of those small people around us? I need to remember that before being made new in Jesus I was just as small in God’s eyes. And what do those people need, those dictators and bullies and oppressors? They all need the same thing I did: a Savior who will enter my smallness so that I can enter his greatness.

They’re not so different after all.