John Patrick Gillese, a Canadian writer, tells the story of going home to the small town in Alberta where he had grown up for a funeral of an older woman. Among the many messages of condolence sent to her family was a note from a family who now lived in British Columbia and had left that small Alberta district some 30 years before. The note expressed sympathy to the family on the loss of their grandmother and added: “We will never forget how kind she was to us back in the 1930s.” Here was a family who remembered a small act of kindness, whatever it was, fifty years later. Small acts of cruelty or kindness leave their effect long after the impact of events of seemingly much greater importance has passed away. Fr, Ron Rolheiser believes there is a profound lesson in this. 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. Most everything urges us to think big and to be careless about small things. The impression is given to us that what is private in our lives is little and unimportant. 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!” Fr. Rolheiser emphatically states that God does care and cares a great deal because, in the end, we care, and small things affect a great deal. We tend to forget quickly 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 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. That is one aspect of God’s treasure he imparts to us.