Being Small

We exhaust ourselves in our efforts to feel big, feel important, feel central.  The temptation is always there.  That's what makes the movie "The Truman Show" ring true.  Since we can only experience everything through our lens, at some point in time, our ridiculous hearts wonder, "What if all of this is fake?  What if everyone else is acting?  What if they are all puppets mean to..."  and then hopefully you laugh at how stupid you are.  We want to feel big, feel important.  Comes all the way back to the fall.  We want to be God in some way, to take our seat on his thrown, or at least sit in the seat next to His.

Yet, tonight I found myself watching Planet Earth, and I felt what I always do when I watch it... small.  The sheer magnitude of this Earth, and all that happens on it.  Not only in the lives of people, but in animals as well.  Seeing those herds of millions of caribou move across the tundra as they have a hundred times before.  They do it time and again with out knowledge of my presence.  Shocking, I know.  All of it let's me know I am not big, not central to this world.  I am important, but not on a global scale, not at all.  I am not important regionally, or even locally.  

The shocking part is just how wonderful feeling small feels.  I rather prefer not being known to the world.  It makes the affection I have received all the more sweet.  It isn't something that has to be, something unstoppable.  It isn't the false affection of fame, nor the false praise of a hero.  It is personal.  It is intimate.  It is about being known.  Just like anything else, it is the rarity that makes it precious.  So then is the knowledge of those I know, and their knowledge of me all the more precious, as few have it.  We truly are experts of one another.  It makes the unsurpassing knowledge our father has of us all the more bending to the mind.  The one is central to it all, the one who set the Earth on it's tilt, set it spinning, who built the need for those caribou to move into their very fabric.  It all points to Him.  It all screams His name, and He knows our name.  He knows the number of hairs that grace your head.  That God, the central being, loves us.  Being small is indeed wonderful.