It Would Fit In A Shirt Pocket

A man asked you a straight question on the tailgate at dinner and you gave him a straight answer, which is not what he was expecting.

He asked how much faith you reckon you have.

And you said, honestly? It would fit in a shirt pocket.

He laughed because he thought you were being modest and you let him think that, and the conversation moved on to the fencing, and you ate your sandwich.

But you were not being modest. You were measuring.

You have been measuring for about thirty years and the number has never gone up. It has not gone down either, which you would have expected, given how many things have happened.

It just sits there. About a pocketful. Enough to get you out of the truck in the morning and no more than that, and every time you have heard somebody talk about great faith, you have thought about the pocket.

And what has grown up round it, over three decades, is an apology. You apologize for the size of it. Not out loud, mostly. But it is the posture you bring, and it has been the posture you bring for so long that it feels like humility.

Before we go a step further, hear me.

I am not correcting you.

There is nothing wrong with a pocketful and there is nothing false in the way you answered him. A man who measures honestly is not a man with a problem, he is a man who does not exaggerate, and that is rarer than faith.

I am saying I heard the answer you gave on the tailgate. That is all.

The only measurement He ever gave

Here is Jesus giving the one and only unit of measurement He ever attached to this.

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.Matthew 17:20

He does not say a great deal of faith. He does not say a bushel. He picks the smallest seed anybody in that crowd would have handled, and He says that is the working quantity.

And He says it in a context where the disciples had just failed at something and asked why, which means He is answering a question about failure with a measurement so small that the measurement itself is the answer.

The point is not that a tiny amount is sufficient because God grades generously. The point is that the size was never the variable. A mustard seed and a bushel do the same job, because the work is not being done by the volume.

So let me turn and speak straight at you, on that tailgate with the field going gold.

You are carrying the working quantity. Not one day, not once it grows, not when you get to whatever number you have had in your head since you were twenty. Right now, with a sandwich in your hand, you are holding what Jesus named as sufficient, and He named it while answering a question about a failure. That is not my flattery. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a written line and lays it on a real man on a real afternoon.

Now, about the apology.

I want to say this plainly, because thirty years is a long time to carry an unnecessary posture.

It is not humility. It resembles humility from the outside and it has worn the same clothes for three decades, but humility is an accurate estimate of yourself, and an apology is an accurate estimate plus a verdict, and it is the verdict that does not belong.

You measured correctly. A pocketful is about right and you are not the first honest man to say so out loud. What is wrong is the sentence you have been putting after the measurement.

And hear this, because it is settled and not still open. You have the amount He specified, and the specification was made small on purpose so that nobody standing in a field could be excluded by it. The word says as a grain of mustard seed, which is a floor rather than a target, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real truck bed at the edge of a real field.

Stop apologizing. Keep measuring. Those two have never had to travel together.