AN ADAGE A DAY â—½ ENCOURAGEMENT
Bigger and Better
by Carole Gilbert
It’s another new year. Are you hoping this year will be “bigger and better?” We always want things bigger and better; our job, our home, our stuff. And there’s nothing wrong with this unless it becomes our priority. Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend what bigger and better really is unless we realize what we really have. This idiom is different because it has no known origin but started as a common idea and grew from other similar idioms, like “the bigger something is, the better it is."
To understand more about our lives around us and how to be happy with our living situations, we can learn a lot from the mouth of babes. An example is the conversation I had with my four-year-old granddaughter.
She asked me the question, “Why did God make the sky blue?”
I thought for a second and realized that she’s not looking for a bigger and better world. She’s seeing the world as it is, already bigger and better, and curious about it. I explained to her that we see God’s promises in the colors He gave us everywhere. We see it in the blue sky along with the grass, trees, the sunset and sunrise, ladybugs, yellow jackets, and butterflies. They are all full of His colors for us to know He is with us. Of course, the ultimate way we know of God’s promises through colors are in the rainbow that He gave us. My granddaughter was seeing the bigger and better part of the world that’s around us. And she knew from whom it came. Like I said, from the mouth of babes.
God gave and gives us many things bigger and better. He gave several that we know of in His Word to be for our example. One of these was Abraham. Although successful as a shepherd and given the nickname from God as “the Good Shepherd,” Abraham was given a bigger part in the world from God because he would be father to many nations and they would be blessed through him. Another is the very humble but obedient Noah who was given life with his family before, during, and after the great and first ever flood, and then went on to restore mankind. And there are many more examples.
We can also take this idiom one step further. We can bring up David and Goliath. This story gives us a different twist because the bigger of these two was not the better. Actually, it was the smaller, being David, that prevailed over the bigger, Goliath. And in fact, it is believed that this story gave birth to the idiom, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
Each of these didn’t ask God for bigger and better things in their lives. On the contrary, a couple even told God they weren’t worthy of bigger and better. But God saw differently. He realized what He had in them and blessed them more than they ever dreamed. Why did He do this? It was for His own glory. It was to fulfill the purpose of His plan. And that is exactly what happens between us and Him. We aren’t worth the bigger and better we ask for but sometimes God gives it and blesses us more than we can even imagine, all for His glory and to fulfill what He has in store for our lives.
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So, which do we want more of now, bigger and better from the world, or bigger and better from God? Either way, we will need to be patient for the response. Like it says in the Word, “Wait upon the Lord,” Isaiah 40:31.