This morning I said farewell to a “mustard seed.”

Her name is Mei Li and for the past couple of  years, she has brightened the mornings of the regulars at Creighton’s Kiewit Fitness Center with her warm greetings at the entry desk and her unfailing cheerfulness. 

Very soon she’ll be taking her new Creighton chemistry degree to an orphanage in  Peru instead of off to medical school or a research lab.  She won’t move mountains.  The Andes will still be standing when she returns to the U.S. to do something with her beloved chemistry.  She’ll only make a tiny impact on the problems of Peruvian orphans.

But Mei Li believes that her efforts will make life a little less hopeless for the children she’ll be serving.  If that’s not the “mustard seed” of faith that Jesus is referring to in today’s Gospel, I don’t know what is.

It’s rational to be like the disciples who tried to cure someone, found they didn’t have enough faith and gave up.  That’s probably how most of us go through life.  Once we find that our faith isn’t of the miracle working variety, we tend to stop trying to work small miracles in the lives of others.  We stop trying to be mustard seeds without even realizing how much we MIGHT accomplish if we believed we could.

I’m reminded of the old advertisement for the Peace Corps that said that “the Peace Corps won’t change the world but it won’t leave it the same either.”  People like Mei Li challenge us to keep trying and leave the rest to God.

Thanks Mei Li.  Blessings and Godspeed.