I've been thinking recently how wonderful it is to serve in the kingdom of God because He has amazing ways of multiplying the smallest things that we contribute, so that big things happen for His glory! Of course you'll be remembering the story of the feeding of the 5000 - but it goes on today in similar and lower-key ways all the time!

My daughter has been staying with me convalescing from an op and she told me this story that illustrates this point. She has been in a prayer partnership for the last 18 months that has really blessed her. My daughter is a young single woman with a real heart for the people living on the estates near her, and her prayer partner is a Christian mother of teenagers, who lives nearby on the estate. They have been meeting every week early in the morning before they both start work. It has obviously been a help to them both, but the mother has especially begun to grow spiritually, and wants her whole life to reflect that. So now she is getting up every morning at 5am so that she can have a time of quiet with God, and then clean her house (which has traditionally been in a bit of a state).

That's quite a radical commitment in itself. but there's more! Her husband has been so impressed that he has now started coming to church regularly with her, and her teenage children, who were part of the house-mess before, have now started to help their mother to clean the house! So a whole family is being blessed in their relationships with God and each other, just because one young woman invited another to be her prayer partner!

Sometimes we're aware of needs around us but become paralysed into inactivity bacause we don't know where to start. But God's principle of multiplication teaches us to just start where we are, with whatever small thing we can contribute - and then see how He increase its value!