“The Little Things (God’s Things)”

     It’s the little things that make or break the day, and the lifetime.

     “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things (from the Greek “oligos,” meaning small in size or number), I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matthew 25:21).

     Relatively few “big” things happen to any of us in our lifetime, including to those possessed of great power, fame, and riches.  Most of life involves the everyday, the repetitious and the mundane.  This especially relates to our relationship with God.  He may move a mountain, stop the sun, or part the Red Sea when necessary.  Most often, however, He moves quietly and unobtrusively in our lives, so much so that we cannot perceive His doings with our human senses and understanding.  As Jacob declared at Bethel, “Surely the Lord is in this place!  And I knew it not” (Genesis 28:16).   The Apostle Paul elaborates, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (II Corinthians 5:7).

     While challenging, this truth of “the little things” actually offers to us the most thrilling possibility of our lives.  If God calls us to attend ourselves to the seemingly inconsequential, He must involve Himself in the aforementioned everyday, repetitious and mundane.  He must be present and active, even if to our limited vision and awareness, He may seem to be unaccounted for.  I fully expect when we get to Heaven that if the Lord allows us to look back at His working in our earthly lives, we will see that He accomplished the greatest and most significant things in our lives when it seemed as if He was a million miles away.  Indeed, He raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead in a lonely tomb where no human eyes witnessed the greatest event in history.  How many other time and eternity-shaking accomplishments of the heart and hand of God cannot be seen, but which fill the world and our lives?

     God’s involvement in the moments of our lives, coupled with our conviction that such Truth is true, provides enabling grace in all things and at all times.  I may not know what He is doing.  I can be sure, however,that He is doing.  This leads to the determination to faithfully devote ourselves to live “heartily, as to the Lord” (Colossians 3:23).  Indeed, the more convinced we become of God’s dynamic presence and activity in the few things, the little things, the more we respond in the passion to think, speak, act and relate accordingly. Because the truth of the matter is that our Heavenly Father’s presence and working means that there really are no little things.  There are simply God’s things, most of which presently happen in such quiet and unassuming ways that only those who walk by faith rather than sight can see, rejoice, and live in the glory that “Surely the Lord is in this place!”

“For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen.”

(Romans 11:36)