God who works little by little

Remember the story of The Ugly Ducking? A mother duck sat on her eggs, one of which was different, large and gray. When it hatched, out climbed a large, clumsy, gray duckling. The other ducks made fun of it so it ran away. Every farm was just the same with laughter and ridicule. And so the ugly duckling kept running.

A year passed. And at the end of the story, the ugly duckling sees its reflection in a pond: it is a beautiful swan after all. Little by little the creature had been transformed.

Long before the children of Israel arrived in Canaan, God had promised them this land: “I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. But not in one year: little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.”

Why would God not give Canaan to his people all at once? “Because,” said God, “the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply against you.” It was for their good! They were not yet large enough, strong enough. God delights to bring us into the kingdom; but first God will make us fit for the kingdom.

The late Shel Silverstein’s poem, God’s Wheel, is a delightful take on this truth: God says to me with kind of a smile, “How would you like to be God a while, And steer the world?”

“Okay,” says I, “I’ll give it a try. Where do I sit? How much do I get? When is lunch; and when do I quit?” God said, “Gimme back that wheel. I don’t think you’re quite ready yet.”

It was little by little, being a faithful shepherd, practicing daily with the sling, being courageous as he guarded the sheep, that prepared David for the battlefield and his victory over the giant Goliath. A master said in one of Jesus’ parables: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little. I will set you over much.”

One of the things that tries our faith—that makes it difficult to follow God’s leading and trust his commands—is that the work of God, little by little as it sometimes is, is not easily discernible. Slowness and littleness make it difficult to see progress and we become disheartened. The movement of the hour-hand on a clock is not easily noticed. The sun, moon and stars show little apparent motion. They seem suspended in the heavens. Yet all are wheeling through the universe at tens of thousands of miles per hour.

It can be difficult and sometimes frustrating to serve a God who works little by little; but even lessons from nature teach us the wisdom of patience and waiting. Ralph Wal do Emerson once asked, “What is a farm but a mute gospel?” Emerson was saying again what Jesus had said about the little by littleness of our life with God:

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

And so is the littleness, the slowness, but the sureness of God’s leading and working and forming.

Say not the struggle naught availeth,

The labor and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

—Arthur Hugh Clough