By Doug Inglish — I grew up in a notoriously flat state (although, my house being nestled in an old growth oak forest only a mile from the sandy shores of a Great Lake, it was anything but ugly). One of the things I constantly fought during my years in the Midwest was moles in my lawn. I won’t go into too many details, but at various times my arsenal included smoke bombs, traps, chewing gum (fresh and chewed), alum, castor oil, and crystalized bobcat urine (yes, you read that last one correctly). Victory was finally achieved by forming a partnership with black rat snakes, which shows that sometimes you have to make a deal with some shady characters to get things done.
Now, the mountains are a constant feature on the landscape. I see them from my house, I make trips into them, and from New Mexico through Wyoming, they are almost constantly visible from my car windows. I have, over the years, become acquainted with the scale involved in the old saying, ‘Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.”
But I serve a God who specializes in doing that very thing. He knows about small stuff, because He says that not even a sparrow falls without His notice (Matthew 10:29). He is intimately acquainted with the big things as well, such as stars and sun (Psalm 147:4). And if He decides to make a mountain out of a molehill by taking something small and turning it into something big, He does it. All the time.
Take the widow in 1 Kings 17. Her figurative mole hill was the tiny amount of food in her cupboard, enough only for one last meal, after which she and her son figured they were going to starve. The mountain came when God fed her, the son, and a prophet every day until the drought ended.
Or another widow found in 2 Kings 4. She had nothing but a mole hill of olive oil and a mountain of bills. But go read about how the oil in that little bottle poured out enough to fill all the jars, bowls, and pitchers in the neighborhood. Enough to pay off the debts and live off the rest.
It goes on like that through the Bible. Peter and his partners couldn’t catch a fish all night, but one cast of the net brought in enough to nearly sink two boats (Luke 5). A little boy’s lunch fed thousands (John 6). Clothes didn’t wear out through forty years of desert hiking (Deuteronomy 8:4). A shepherd with a sling won a battle that a fully-equipped army was afraid to fight (1 Samuel 17). A handful of men with torches ran off the entire army of Midian (Judges 7).
We often have difficulties with perspective. A splinter in our own eye can look like a log in someone else’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5). Sometimes we think our problems are bigger than we can imagine, when God knows they are barely detectable. Even death itself is merely a mole hill of a problem, given that our hope in the resurrection is a mountain of a solution. That is why Job could declare, “Even if He slays me, I will hope in Him …” (Job 13:15).
So of course, take your troubles to Him, no matter what size they seem to be. But as you do, take a deep breath and say to yourself, “This is only a mole hill. The mountain has not yet come into view. But it will.”
—Doug Inglish is RMC director for planned giving and trust services; photo by Rajmund Dabrowski
