Yesterday, we thought about fruit–the fact that God is looking for fruit and that fruit includes justice and righteousness:

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice,
but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness,
but behold, an outcry! (Isaiah 5.7, ESV)

Mark Greene, in Fruitfulness on the Frontline, suggests six ways to be fruitful, and I’ve written about a few of these before. But I’ve never written about Molding Culture, the topic on which I had to preach recently! (You can see the sermon here if you like – it begins about 26 minutes into the October 25 service.) When I reread Mark’s chapter on the topic, the first example had to do with tablecloths! Here’s the story:

Take, for example, a primary school in an urban regeneration area. Lots of the kids are on free school dinners. Many of them have never experienced what it feels like to sit down for a family meal. Now their canteen is a little drab and rather noisy, and the kid zing in and out like Formula One cars refueling in the pits. It’s the way things are done. But Rachel, the assistant head, wanted to teach them that meals are special, for conversation, not just for food, and she wanted to make them feel special. So the school bought tablecloths for all the tables. The change has been remarkable. The tablecloths absorb some of the clatter…and make the atmosphere calmer, more conducive to chatting. But more significantly, the presence of tablecloths instantly communicated that eating together is special and that kids are, too. In the end, the tablecloths enhanced the quality of relationships, the quality of love, between pupils, and between pupils and teachers. -Fruitfulness on the Frontline, pages 120 – 121.

Tablecloths! A little thing that I certainly never would have thought of. Sometimes we don’t do something because we think we can’t do anything big enough to make a difference. But more often than not, God uses small actions. It’s even how Jesus describes the Kingdom:

Jesus taught them this parable: “How can I describe God’s kingdom realm? Let me illustrate it this way. It is like the smallest of seeds that you would plant in a garden. And when it grows, it becomes a huge tree, with so many spreading branches that various birds make nests there.” Jesus taught them another parable: “How can I describe God’s kingdom realm? Let me give you this illustration: It is like something as small as yeast that a woman kneads into a large amount of dough. It works unseen until it permeates the entire batch and rises high.” (Luke 13.18 – 21, Passion Translation)

Have you seen this domino demonstration by Stephen Morris, illustrating a 1983 physics paper that said that a domino can knock over another domino that is 1.5 times bigger? It’s worth a look, only one minute. Nothing illustrates the power of little things better:

Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings? (Zechariah 4.10, MSG)

“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. “Bring them here to me,” [Jesus] said. (Matt. 14.17, 18)