The big import of small things

Life is routine. Most days are filled with minor, seemingly insignificant events and the hum of quickly forgotten daily tasks. It began when we were children. We had to tidy our rooms, take out the garbage, wash the dishes (or was it dry them?), and complete our homework. Treating your little brother or sister with kindness was a daily challenge. But success in these small things paid a character dividend in your adult years with weighty consequences.

The mundane and the trivial extend throughout adulthood, too, paving the walkways of our daily routines. But we expect that. The challenges of our grown-up years is the confoundingly annoying byways of life that we do not choose, the false starts, the surges and falls. It is when we face those times that we remind ourselves of God’s promise: “For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, ESV). His hand is in the small and forgettable things and the unwelcome thorny things preparing us for greater things of larger import.

Joseph, son of Jacob, had it on the highest authority that he was destined for greatness, but not by the route he expected. He spent the years of his strength overseeing an Egyptian master’s household as a slave and then managing a small prison. But without this preparation he could not have steered Egypt through its long famine and blessed his family with life, the family of the world’s Savior.

If young David, son of Jesse, had known from boyhood that he would one day be king of Israel, he surely would have applied himself to swordsmanship and strategy. Instead, God had him tending sheep, writing devotional poetry in the quiet times, and occasionally fighting off a bear. God was preparing him for service much greater than shepherding.

Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger calmly landed a disabled passenger jet on Manhattan’s Hudson River without cartwheeling, loss of life, or even serious injury. After five years in the Air Force, he flew routine flights between American cities for almost 30 years, taking people to business meetings, weddings, vacations, and Thanksgivings. He was happy with what he thought was the point of all that—picking people up and putting them down safely somewhere else—until just a year before he retired, when the only thing that stood between 155 people and an early death was his 20,000 hours of unremarkable flying experience.

Long before Canadian House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers went all action hero on the Ottawa gunman to bring him down, he spent 38 years in law enforcement, including 10 years in Canada’s Northwest Territories working in small native communities.

We are told not to despise the day of small things (Zechariah 4:10). Jesus assures us that he who is faithful in little will be given charge over much (Matthew 25:21). Christians can serve faithfully and energetically in the small, at times inscrutable, things not only because we serve our Lord in them but also because we commit the big picture to Him and trust Him to bring lush fruit from small seeds.