We can worry ourselves sick over international peace while neglecting the small kingdom of responsibility God has placed under our own roof. We can fret over what presidents and prime ministers are doing across the world while we have not made the bed, returned the call, pulled the weeds, forgiven the neighbor, or prayed with our children.

The same thing happens in the church. We speak nobly about Christian unity across the globe, but avoid the brother who irritates us in the foyer. We lament division in the body of Christ, but nurse resentment toward the sister whose voice, opinions, or habits have become unbearable to us. It is possible to have a grand vision for the church universal while refusing the harder obedience of love in the church local.

But the biblical impulse runs in the other direction. It moves toward faithfulness near at hand.

Jesus did not spend his three years of public ministry managing a global institution. He gathered twelve. He walked with them, ate with them, corrected them, endured them, loved them, and prepared them. The salvation of the world began, astonishingly, with table fellowship, foot washing, private instruction, and patient discipleship.

This is the secret we keep forgetting. The kingdom comes like leaven in dough, like seed in soil, like light in a house. God’s work is not less important because it begins small. In fact, that is usually how God’s work begins.

Peter says judgment begins with the household of God. That means our first concern is not whether everyone else is being faithful. It is whether we are.

So make the bed. Pull the weeds. Answer gently. Forgive the brother. Stop avoiding the sister. Pray for your church. Serve the person close enough to annoy you.

The renewal of the world may begin there.

Maranatha,

Jordy