Principle of The Least

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Different people have different ideas about what the Kingdom of God is. It often depends on what their church denomination tells them. In Jesus' time, people also had different ideas of the Kingdom, and often they compared it with grand things. That's how I imagine them to have thought of the Kingdom. Like how people today think of great things. Great has to be big, moneyed, spectacular and liked, like how people always opt to go large with their fries, Coke, chicken, etc. 

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay. 

Generally, regardless of the time in history, people have always thought that big is correct. Big is power. Big is success. So even churches aim to be big, moneyed and peopled because they think these things are success measurements. They're "proofs" that God is blessing the ministry. And most church people prefer going to these big churches and support them to share in the blessings. It's easy to imagine how people and their religious leaders in Jesus' time thought likewise. 

But Jesus demolished all that. 

He likened the Kingdom to small things, and kept doing so each time. It must have either shocked his religious audience or demolished the hopes and dreams of his followers. Small? Isn't GOD big? Then His kingdom must be big, too. In fact, it is, but not in the sense that the world understands "big." The world needs to see a physically visible "big" to believe that something is big. GOD's "big" is always seen with the right heart. It is unseen to the worldly but crystal clear to the kingdomly--those who genuinely seek first (and last) GOD's kingdom and GOD's righteousness, nothing more. 

If you don't see the least as the greatest, you have never sought the kingdom with the right heart. Perhaps you think you have, but you have not. Genuine seeking will produce Jesus' heart in your heart. You probably just attend or conduct bible studies or Sunday school, or preach Sunday sermons that "bless" people. But these things only blind people more as long as they're based on the world's "big." 

The Kingdom's idea of big is like yeast that a woman mixes with dough. When you mix yeast in flour to make a dough, the yeast seems to disappear into the dough. You don't see the yeast but the dough, because the dough got bigger. That's what people see, the "big" size. Yet, the bigger size is due to the yeast. Though small in measure, it leavens up the whole dough. It has been worked through the dough. God's design is for His Kingdom to be like that. Unseen but affects things to grow them in visible size. But it's not the visible size that matters, but the growth element inside. In this sense, the Kingdom is big, but seen only and appreciated in the eyes of those who know. 

If you don't see the value in God's least, you will never know God's greatest. Jesus' Kingdom is big only to the unseen in this world, those who are "there" but are unseen and unknown.

...through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. 
[2 Corinthians 6.8-10]


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