January 31 Moving Mountains

Matthew 17:19-20 Afterward the disciples asked Jesus privately, "Why couldn't we cast out that demon?" "You didn't have enough faith," Jesus told them. "If you had faith even as a small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it would move. Nothing would be impossible."


The sun was shining through the spring green trees, walking up the hill to my house after school. My sister was either behind me or ahead of me because I remember being all alone with that verse kept running through my mind, 'faith as a grain of mustard seed could move a mountain.' So I thought I would give it a try. I can't remember whether a tree or a mountain was the object of my test, but I can remember closing my eyes, and thinking, I believe, I believe, I believe God can do anything. He can move a mountain."

And as hard as I 'believed,' nothing had changed when I opened my eyes. Well, for the moment that was that, and I figured there was something I was missing here - because I did completely believe God could do anything He had a mind to.

Now, over forty years later, I recognize there is one, probably among many, thing good about aging. I have had many opportunities to see God move mountains, even though I did not recognize what was happening at the time. Born into a home where my parents sent me to a liberal church Sunday mornings, God moved so that a neighbor had a CEF Joy Club where I heard the gospel and received Christ as an eight-year-old. As a fourteen-year-old I asked to be baptized in the good Baptist Church, God moved mountains to get me to, and the deacons said "No," because I only could get there Sunday mornings. God moved mountains in my heart keeping me from bitterness, so I went to Bible College (get that - a mountain moved) unbaptized, and later God moved mountains allowing my husband and I to serve in pastoral roles. In Africa, in the middle of a civil war, we were surrounded by gunfire with no way out, but God moved mountains to provide a way for my children and I to escape, and my husband a month later....well, I could go on and on.

I have seen God move mountains and do the impossible, and I have to admit, through faith the size of a mustard seed. But did you know that a mustard seed can grow a tree/plant ten feet or more tall? God planted that seed of faith in my heart as an eight-year-old, but He has nurtured it all these years, and it has grown. Could I say as tall as the tallest mustard plant - I don't know, but I do know that regardless of the storms that have blown that plant almost flat sometimes, God has restored it every time.