I had the privilege of hearing Sara Groves during the Doing Church Conference, May 8-9, in Pleasant Hill, CA. She doesn’t write praise-chorus music. Her songs are honest — sometimes painfully honest — reflections on how God has been working her life. She has a tremendous gift of combining emotion with depth of insight and weaving them into words and song in a God-glorifying way. I strongly recommend that you get some of her CDs and reflect on the words!

One song that struck me on her “Add to the Beauty” album is “Kingdom Comes.” The chorus has been going over and over in my mind since I first heard it:

That’s a little stone, that’s a little mortar
That’s a little seed, that’s a little water
In the hearts of the sons and the daughters
The kingdom’s coming

I think of Jesus’ words:

“What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” (Mark 4:30-32)

The Kingdom grows usually in small increments, so small that most people discount them — we discount them. But God is at work growing, building in our lives. And before we know it something beautiful is built. Ours is not to do great things for God, but day by day to seek God and let him build what he is building. He is the incremental Builder and we must trust him.