I was surprised on my birthday with a gigantic piece of chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. DADDY LIKE!!!! Thank you, clergy group.

It made me think of an essay I’ve always wanted to write. I’ll call it, “The Four Small Things.”

Some time ago I was impressed on how the world rotates around small four beans, the vanilla bean, the coffee bean, the chocolate bean and peanut.

Think of how much pleasure these things bring us. Think of how many folks are employed in their production. Think of the combinations you can make. I remember one time having a peanut butter milk shake. Coffee ice cream is a favorite of mine.

Peanut butter can combine with honey, jelly and number of things.

I never tried Elvis’s peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Complexity in simplicity. The great in the small.

It made me think of the four gospel writers. With the exception of Luke, the great physician, all were relatively common folk.

St. Mark, especially, was a young man.

Tradition states he was St. Peter’s amanuensis, who wrote down the simple fisherman’s recollections of his time with Jesus.

Everyone of my years still can remember his/her first transistor radio. In my case it was a simple Emerson portable AM/FM, What worlds that little thing would bring to my room in the Philadelphia area.

Kids today will never experience the power of the AM band. I still remember late at night and early in the morning pulling places, like Boston, and Chicago all with no Wi-Fi, Still today I can pick up 9 a.m. CHML out of Canada. So simple by today’s standards. Late at night they play old time radio shows.

So with us who are called to bear the good news. How quick we are to compare ourselves to others. Yet God can use us just where we are. We can be hesitant, each of us, like Moses, can try to give God a hundred reasons why we can’t serve. Mine is probably fear of putting my foot in my mouth. Pastor LeVan who confirmed me was always talking about St. Peter as the patron saint of foot in mouth disease.

I’ll never forget reading the temptation story of Jesus and using the word, ‘Pinochle’ for the Temple’s pinnacle. That was probably the lightest of my infractions.

Years ago I found I would share a birthday with Anne Frank, who lost her life in a concentration camp. Just a young thing, she would write a very great quote.

“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you didn’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

God calls whom God calls. While I’ve heard it said, you get the leadership you deserve, I know that God can use us. Small like a peanut, we can do marvelous things.

I always loved the poem ‘The Old Violin’ In it, an old well-worn violin is going cheaply at an auction. A fellow step from the rear and plays it with such gusto and beauty, its price skyrockets. I still remember Mrs. Stevens reading it us in the 6th grade. The difference, as the poem brings out, “The touch of the Master’s hand.”

You can Google it, and if you can’t just ask your grand kid to do for it.

Its final line states.

“But the Master comes,

And the foolish crowd never can quite understand,

The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought

By the Touch of the Masters’ Hand.”

This week, consider your place in God’s kingdom.

What can you do? Who can you touch? Where can you go that will testify to the Master’s touch in your life?

When we hear those voices telling us how small we are, remember those four beans and what a different they make in the world.

One final thought, I recently learned that the average human can think as many as 50,000 thoughts in a single day. That’s amazing. That number is a little less than all the names on the Vietnam memorial in Washington DC.

Speaking of little things, I notice that a single thought can hold the other 49,999 hostage in my brain. (I’m not obsessive compulsive, I’m not obsessive compulsive, I’m not obsessive compulsive …)

A bad thought has been compared to a drop of India ink in glass of milk, you don’t need a lot to darken the cow juice.

On the whole, I’ve been told it takes at least five positive experiences to break the power of negative one.

In the past few weeks, I’ve developed a meditative device. It cues in on how one thought has power over 49,999. I call it “50,000 to One”

“That nagging fear that I do dread

Is but a thought within my head.

Of fifty thousand, tis but one,

I’ll daily trust in Christ the Son. “

I commend it to you. It sings to the words of the doxology (Praise God from whom …) or the hymn “On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry” (tune: Puer Nobis). Consider using it when you find the 49,000-plus held hostage this week.

Celebrate with Anne Frank the good news inside you and make it palpable to those around you.

You be responsible for someone’s rebirth, old bean!