The Kingdom of God, as Jesus assures us, is about mustard seeds, about small, seemingly unimportant things, but which, in the long run, are the big things. Not much in our world today helps us to believe that. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that almost everything urges us to think big and to be careless about small things. We are given The impression that what is private in our lives is minor and unimportant. Likewise, what is played out on the smaller stage of life – in the more domestic areas of family, marriage, and our exchanges with our neighbors and colleagues – is also deemed to be of little consequence. The big stage is what is important. What mark have you left in the world? What have you achieved on the bigger stage? What has been your involvement in the great causes? Nobody cares about your little life! Private morality, private grudges, the little insults that we hand out, our many angers and resentments, the small infidelities within our sexual lives, the many little acts of selfishness, and, conversely, the small acts of sacrifice and selflessness that we do and the little compliments that we hand out, these are not valued much in our culture. As a song suggests: “Our little lives don’t count at all!” I remember a young man, very dedicated to social causes, once asking me: “Do you really think that God gives a damn whether you say your morning prayers, or whether you hold some small grudge, or whether or not you are always polite to your colleagues, or whether or not you are always chaste sexually? That’s petty, small, private stuff that deflects attention from the bigger moral issues.” Well, I believe that God does care and cares a great deal because, in the end, we care, and small things, as these stories illustrate, affect a great deal. Small acts of cruelty or kindness leave their effect long after the impact of events of seemingly much more significant importance has passed away. There is, I believe, a profound lesson in this. Who won the Nobel Prize for literature two years ago? Who won the Academy Awards last year? Who won the Super Bowl three years ago? Who won the World Cup 10 years ago? It’s funny how quickly we tend to forget these things. It is also curious what we do not forget. We tend to forget soon who won such or such an award, or who starred in such and such a movie or play. But we remember, and remember vividly, with all the healing and grace it brought, who was nice to us all those years ago on the playground at school. We remember who encouraged us when we felt insecure. Conversely, we also remember, and remember vividly, with all the scars it brought, who laughed at us on the playground, made fun of our clothes, or who called us stupid. Falls come, winters come, springs come, summers come and go, and sometimes, the only thing we can remember from a given year is some tiny mustard seed of cruelty or kindness.