The wedding favourite, 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, tells us that our efforts and offerings are worthless if they’re without love. But when you’ve bitten off more than you can chew in your determination to give, sometimes it’s hard to feel much love left in the tank. How, then, should we give?
Perhaps the answer lies in a quote from that past-master of giving, Mother Teresa, who said, ‘There are no great acts, only small acts done with great love.’ Maybe she recognised the human desire to think we can do it all – the very thing that can so easily lead to that kind of burnt-out ‘giving on empty’.
And maybe that’s one of the hardest things to accept about the giving of our prayers. Praying can seem a very small act, almost a feeble one, in the face of huge problems like global poverty.
But the power in the act is so utterly out of our hands. It’s the tiny mustard seed that we bring to The Mountain-Mover. And yet we’re told that we need to keep on giving our prayers, tiny though they might be.
Acts 2 tells us that the apostles ‘devoted themselves’ to prayer – people who had known Jesus face to face. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians that we should ‘pray continually’. Clearly he felt that prayer is something that it’s possible to do most of the time, not a great yoke round the neck, or something that costs us huge physical effort. Something that should be as natural as breathing.
So carry your packet of mustard seeds lightly to God, each one a tiny gift from you that, in the hands of the Almighty, can move those mountains of poverty and suffering in ways that will leave us speechless with awe.
And let your prayers glory in being small acts – yes – but small acts done with great love.