The Small Stuff

by David Baer | published: Tuesday, October 2, 2018, 11:46 AM

If you pass my house during some of my free moments, you might see me lying flat on my stomach in the yard. Don't be alarmed—I'm OK, and if you look closer, you might see a camera in my hands. What exactly am I doing? Well, people say not to sweat the small stuff, but I've become a bit of a nut about the small stuff. I love to zoom in close on flowers, blades of grass, insects, drops of water resting on leaves... There is a beautiful, fascinating world that, most of the time, escapes our notice.

In the book of Job in the Bible, we read a story about a man beset by tragedy—the loss of his property, his family, and his health. In his distress, Job remembers a time when his life made sense. He acted with integrity and justice, and in return he experienced God as a friend who blessed him (Job 29). Now, he accuses God of creating a world of chaos and disorder, where rewards and punishments are given out at random: “It is all one; therefore I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent” (9:22-23).

It is this accusation—that the innocent suffering of a good person proves that creation lacks justice and purpose—that provokes God to respond. And what God does is to bring Job back in time to the first moments of creation, “when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy” (38:7), to bring him out among the beauty and movement of the stars (38:31-33), to bring him to the bottom of the sea (38:16), to bring him into the wilderness, where God provides nourishment and care apart from human notice (38:25-27). What emerges is a picture of a world where human beings are not at the center, where there is danger and even violence, but which also possesses its own sort of savage beauty and order. To see God as God of the non-human world in all its manifestations, great and small, brings not just a change of mind, but also a healing for Job. The “God” he had believed in, who had hemmed him in on every side, may have been absent, but the God who speaks out of the whirlwind was very much alive and present, everywhere he might care to look. Overcome with awe and humbled, Job withdraws his complaint, which no longer seems so important, and in time his circumstances change.

As I look closely at the small stuff in my backyard, I feel excitement at exploring the hidden world that is always so close by, and appreciation for the beauty I find there. But I also feel a sense of awe at the grandeur of a Creator God who traces the earthward fall of the raindrop the comes to rest on the leaf, who watches over the tiny ants and aphids with love and concern, and who gave us a mind and an imagination capable of carrying us beyond ourselves to take in a universe that is so much bigger than anything we could conceive or control. What might each of us find, if we took the time to explore the overlooked natural and human spaces in our own neighborhoods? How might our experience and appreciation of these spaces enrich our mental image of God?