One year when I as a kid, my mother told me I could order anything under $20 that I wanted from the Swiss Colony catalogue.  Now for those of you who don’t know, Swiss Colony sells cheeses, candies and an assortment of food products.  You don’t much think about them until Christmas and then, as soon as November rolls around, you’re bombarded with their catalogues. 

It being the 1980’s, $20 was a princely sum to spend.  So, I poured over the pages of that catalogue for days and days.  I wanted to make the right choice.  Would it be the Baby Swiss?   Would it be a collection of cheese spreads?  In the end, I ordered something called a chocolate Chris-mouse.  It was Chocolate mouse, decorated with white, green and red fondant icing.  I couldn’t wait for it to arrive.

In my mind, it just kept growing and growing and growing in size with each passing day.  I honestly believed that Chocolate Chris-mouse was going to be the size of large dog.  And then, the day came.  The postman delivered the package to the door.  My mom handed me the box.  It looked smaller than I’d anticipated but, I figured, looks can be deceiving.  Even as I was unwrapping it I just knew it would be as huge as my mind imagined it to be. 

As I peeled away the packaging, I sadly realized it wasn’t as large as I’d hoped.  In fact, it was much, much smaller.  If I’d really looked at the description in the catalogue, I would’ve seen the chris-mouse was no bigger than 7 inches by 5 inches.   Even though it was tasty, it somehow never quite tasted as good as I’d hoped.  It couldn’t…it was just too small.

And that’s just it, isn’t it?  Early in our years, we imagine things to be grand, splendid, larger than life.  Then comes the day.  The day when we really see things with eyes unclouded by our imaginations.  We’re disappointed.   Falling from the clouds of our larger-than-life expectations, we plummet to planet earth and it hurts when we land.

Feeling the pain of shattered expectations, we grow suspicious and leery.  So we guard our hopes and our expectations.  Our minds won’t allow our dreams to soar very high for we know when the bottom drops out, the impact will be less painful the lower we set them.    

And it’s so easy to take these smaller-than-life expectations into our faith lives.  Rev. Guy Sales notes – “In 1952, British Scripture scholar and translator J.B. Phillips wrote a book with the provocative title Your God is Too Small. He said: "The trouble with many people today is that they have not found a God big enough for modern needs."

He was right. 

"The challenge for many people today is finding a God who is big enough to embrace the world and close enough to fill their inner emptiness."

And so, I wonder – How many of us have a conception of God than is two sizes too small? 

Many of us, truth be told.