Little Things

Little Things Mean A Lot!

Matthew 13: 31

When I was growing up, I enjoyed singing a popular song with the title,
"Little Things Mean A Lot."
A smile was mentioned in the song.
A smile is a little thing that can mean a whole lot to someone needing just a smile.

There are many who have a problem in our churches of confusing size with significance.
They also mistake quantity for quality.
We are so victimized by bigness that we have come to believe that bigness is equivalent
to significance.
We must remind ourselves of the importance of the little things in life.

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For want of a horse the rider was lost,
For want of a rider the battle was lost,
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

Little things in life have their own significance.
Little things in life were significant to Jesus.

Notice, how often Jesus gave attention to little things:

The little things in life caught the attention of Jesus and caused his comments.
His parables are occasioned by some little thing -- a cup of water given in His name -- the widow's mite.

Little things do not lack in significance just because they are little in size.
Scientists can tell you of the importance of the little.
In the past, classical physics dealt with the big world.
It used the telescope to talk in astronomical figures and great distances.
It spoke of bigness of an expanding universe.

Then modern science came with the doctrine of relativity, and then came with the fission of the atom.
Nuclear physics has turned our attention to the little, not the big.
Physicists demonstrate the cyclotron in which the atoms are bombarded and the reaction recorded.
These tiny particles can produce great power.
These particles are so little that they cannot even be seen.
The power of a split atom defies all description.
The energy released is one million times greater than any known explosive.


Little things in life today have come into a significance that has nothing to do with size,
and the energies that are being released from these tiny things -- so small that nobody has seen them --
has enough power to possibily destroy the world or to give the world a new era of hope.

Think of Jesus speaking about the mustard seed.
It was so small in its beginnings, and so large in its consequences.
In the moral world, the mustard seed is the choice that is made by an individual.

A little choice may have great consequences.

Not only do the dramatic deeds of moral heroism possess significance, but also the individual
choices of our daily life possess tremendous significance.
Indeed, the individual choice is the matter of central importance in life for any person.

Dante said that "virtue is a habit of right choice.

Picture it if you will – a person makes a right choice and then another and still another.
Right choice becomes a habit.
The habit weaves something good into the pattern of life, and we call it virtue.
Dependability in the moral world is simply the habit of right choice.
It begins with a free decision when a person chooses something right when he had the power to choose
something wrong, and then did it again and again.
It is these little things that build gigantic moral strength into the life of the world.

Conversely, if a person chooses wrong when he has the power to choose right,
he then finds it easier the next time to choose wrong when he has the power to choose right.
It is still easier to choose wrong the third time, and the sense of shame begins to disappear.
So the habit of wrong choice becomes bad character.

The cumulative consequence of the little choices is something big.
The temptation, "Do it just this once," is a dangerous and terrible one,
for it is the little things that build virtue or evil into the fabric and pattern of life.
We could say that every decision is like coming to a crossroads where we must go one way or another.
And if we go the right way we move toward our desired destination, but if we go the wrong way
we go farther and farther away from it.
The power of choice in the moral world is great.

There is an old Arabian legend about a sailor who has a genie in a bottle.
His curiosity gets the better of the sailor, and one day he opens the bottle.
The genie not only comes up out of the bottle but goes up and up and up in the air,
all the while getting bigger and bigger until the sailor is terrified at this black apparition
as high as the sky and filling all his horizon.

A wrong moral decision is like that, letting loose something whose blackness grows to such a terrible size,
darkening the sky, and filling our horizon with dread.

In contrast, a little deed of kindness goes farther than we can ever imagine.

"How far that little candle throws its beams
So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

You can start a chain reaction of kindness, one good deed of kindness causing another.
One good deed that shows good will will bring a response of good will.
One good deed of love will bring a response of love.

The power of moral chain reaction is greater than we imagine, because God's blessing is upon it.
In the moral world, the little things, the little unremembered acts of kindness and love,
are a power that we must never underestimate.

It is the responsibility of Christians in their daily decisions, in their words, their thoughts, their purposes,
their deeds to gather up in these little things of life -- the very quality of the Spirit of Christ -- so that
they make the world a brighter and better place because of the good will that they have released into it.

Many of you are familiar with log jams.
It is true that a log in a wrong position can cause a jam that would jam thousands and thousands
of logs – absolutely stopping them.
One little log among so many thousand – but what great results for bad or for good.
A little thing!
One decision can do so much harm; one decision can do so much good!
In the spiritual world the little things of life are so very important.
For instance, the way we are related to life and to our work is so much more important
than we commonly believe.

There are people who are doing right things in a wrong way.
A wrong way of doing things is dangerous for mental and spiritual health.

It is so important to be right with God!
The Bible tells us to joy in the Lord.
It tells us that God loves a cheerful giver -- that is, a person who gives in the right spirit.
It tells us to have courage and confidence and faith and enthusiasm and to rise above
the constraints of law into the large liberty of God's love.

How we are related to the obligations of the Christian life is very important, although it may
seem a small thing.
Do you say, "If I am a member of the church and do my duty, that's enough?"
It is not enough, by any means.
Being a member of the church, important as it is, is but a symbol of your happy and free personal
commitment to Christ as Lord and Saviour.
It is outward evidence of an inner spiritual loyalty.
It is evidence that you are happily serving Him and doing His will.

But it is the spirit in which we do what we do that is important!
Doing the right deed for the wrong reason may be the ultimate treason.
A person's relation to his work is so important.
How many people in America today have the right relation to their work?
Not as many as we would like to think.
For some it is drudgery, and for others it is a perpetual holiday.
To enter upon our work with eagerness and enthusiasm and a desire to be creative -- to find joy
in our work -- to have a right relation to it -- is so important.
To many this might seem to be a little thing.

If you talk like this to some individuals, they will tell you how much money they make
or how many benefits they have.
But these are not the important things in life!
The important thing is your right relation to your work so that you love to be about it
and have a high sense of God-given purpose in it.

The spirit of your work is not a small thing.
It is a thing of vast consequence for your happiness, your health, your peace of mind,
your constructive contribution to the world and to the service of God.
For the Christian whose life centers in worship, it is the many little moments of consecration
and devotion that have such eternal significance: Remember how Jesus valued the little things!
Then each time you sing a hymn and say a prayer – you can be sure that the blessings
of Jesus are upon your precious experience.
Jesus blessed the faith of the individual – spoken or unspoken.
He understood and answered the prayers of the heart, expressed or unexpressed.

Let us never underestimate any particular moment of devotion,
for it has an importance far greater than anything we can comprehend.
Far greater than all the energies released now from this mysterious universe in the realm of physics
are the energies that can be released into this world through the spiritual chain reaction
as we give our attention to the little things in life.

May God's blessing bring the mustard seed of faith into our life to greatness of loyalty, love, and service.
May we make this world a better place because we have lived in it – because we recognize
the importance in God's plan of the little things in life.

Sermon by Dr. Harold L. White


Additional thoughts:

We have become accustomed to thinking of the importance of a thing in terms of how much
noise is made about it.
If a thing is very important, then there are to be headlines about it in the newspaper.
There will be information given about it on television.
There ought to be billboards about it.
There must be a great fuss over it.
Then we would believe that it is important.

But that isn't the way God gets His work done.

There is no fanfare of trumpets when spring comes.
Silently the drawing forces of the universe pull the sap, down from where it has been hibernating
in the roots of the soul, up – step by step – into the tree, until finally one beautiful spring morning
the miracle happens and the blossoms burst out.
Spring is here!

But there was no great to-do about it.

Just so it is in the realm of spiritual life – the process is as silent and as invisible as what goes on
in the ground when the seed is planted.
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