Too Small a Thing

Every Tuesday for eleven years, a retired schoolteacher named Dorothy sat in the back room of a church in Decatur, Georgia, tutoring refugee children in English. She taught them phonics with flashcards she'd laminated herself. She corrected their grammar over animal crackers and juice boxes. Most weeks, she drove home wondering if any of it mattered.

Then one of those children — a girl from Eritrea named Semhar — graduated valedictorian from her high school. Then college. Then medical school. Today she practices medicine in three countries, and she still calls Dorothy every Mother's Day.

Dorothy thought her calling was a folding table in a church basement. God saw a light to the nations.

Isaiah 49 captures this divine arithmetic. The Servant feels the sting of futility: "I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing." But the Almighty answers with breathtaking expansion — restoring Israel is "too small a thing." The calling reaches further: "I will make you a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."