Because I was born in Texas, I grew up with the axiom that everything in Texas is bigger. I believed it.

At that time, Texas was the largest state in the U.S. When President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the U.S. in 1959, replacing Texas as the biggest state—I actually cried. I fiercely told family and friends that when all the ice melted in Alaska, Texas would be the biggest state again. And I believed that too.

Some things that are bigger are better—like the bigger slice of chocolate cake and the bigger chocolate candy bar. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate bigger pullovers and T-shirts. Or perhaps I need them? And I’ve always preferred bigger dogs.

But sometimes it’s the little things that make us smile. Here in Scotland with unending grey skies and the colors of summer falling like the constant mist and rain and bleeding away into memories—it was a small thing that made me smile. One purple clover bloom in a vast green sea of grass.

I hate cold. I hate getting cold. I hate winter. Snow holds no appeal to me no matter how much ugly and blight it paints out of sight with virgin whiteness. Snow is cold. I hate cold.

So even with cold stealing over the land like a furry nighttime thief, the one purple bloom made me smile.

Isn’t it marvelous that a great and Mighty God like ours—a God who stretched out the vastness of space, created the weightiness of Earth and the planets and made Texas…took time to make little things as well. Tiny insects, sugar gliders, finger monkeys, pygmy possums, hummingbirds, starfish, seahorses, hedgehogs, hummingbirds, chameleons, turtles—and a host of other things that would take days to list. And fragile, colorful flowers. Even a small purple bloom.

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:3)

And what is a little purple bloom that coaxes smiles on a wet and rainy day?

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