How big is a mustard seed?

Pastor James Avery

“We are a busy detachment, there are a lot of serious crimes that we have to deal with,” the officer began. As she continued talking to me my mind trailed off. How could she not understand the frustration and the anger that I was feeling? Why couldn’t the RCMP just drop what they were doing and find the perpetrators that broke into my house on Easter Sunday. After all, I reasoned, I am a man of God, and I should not be the victim of a crime. Isn’t that what the RCMP get paid for? Doesn’t anybody in this world care any more? What is society coming to? Soon, I was lost in a mountain of thoughts and doubts. I was guilty of making assumptions about many people - about the RCMP members, about the residents of this town, and about the young offenders who broke into my home and thought that they needed my property more than I did. Often in life, our assumptions about other people and circumstances cloud our judgment. They cause us to be blinded; they make us unable to see God’s love and grace toward us. Our quick impressions and thoughts pile up like mountains all around us. Soon we are left feeling isolated, uncertain, and possibly even scared. Sometimes it seems like there is no hope, like we are just wanderers in a foreign land - a land filled with chaos, trouble, and hurt. It is in times like this where God’s Word comes to us to offer a solution. Jesus said, “If you have faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20) How big is a mustard seed? God’s promise through Jesus Christ is He will never turn His back on those who He has created. Even in the midst of our mountains of doubt and despair, God comes searching, in the same way He came calling out to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden after they turned their backs to Him as a result of their doubt. Faith can move mountains, it can uncloud our judgments and it brings certainty. Namely, certainty that we have been redeemed of our sins by the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ. When Jesus cried out on the cross, and breathed His last, it was at that point that your sins, and mine were washed from us. Because God chose you above all other things, you have been given the gift of eternal life. It is a gift that is freely given; a gift that comes through faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. It is this same faith that lets us realize that our mountains of doubt, sin and unbelief are not that big at all. Through faith, I know we are blessed to have a committed RCMP force who are working very hard for the members of this community. By faith, I am able to realize that while my home was invaded, and even as my family and I feel violated, we have a Saviour who loves and cares for us. We have a Redeemer - God Himself - who came to break down our mountains of sin, doubt and unbelief. He did so simply because He couldn’t bear the thought of spending eternity without His beloved creation. God loves and cares for you. There is no mountain of doubt, loneliness, despair or sin that He cannot move. God has a vested interest in your life, and He is calling you to realize that you are His child. He is calling you to come to faith and to rest assured that through faith in Him, your sins are removed from you as far as the east is from the west; the two shall never meet.