Be Faithful in the Little Things
Written by CLF member Dawson J. McKay.
My family and I have been at home for weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything has slowed down or come to a halt. We are getting a new perspective on what is important. Our priorities have been thrown into sharper focus. Certain aspects of life that I thought were important suddenly do not seem so important. And other aspects of life that I have not bothered with are suddenly front and centre and I can see how important they actually are. Some things I once considered “big” are actually “small” and other things I once considered “small” actually seem pretty “big.” Over the past few years, I have noticed that the little things are not always so little and that the big things are not always so big. I’ve also learned that tending to the little things yields real and tangible benefits. I’ve learned that being faithful with little is as important as being faithful with much. The things we think we can afford to overlook are often essential. We need to be faithful with what we have, even the small things. Brothers and sisters, we should aim to look at the small things in our lives and to do those small things. If we’re faithful with a little then God will entrust us with much.
Let me start with a personal illustration.
I started 2020 with a bullet journal. A bullet journal is a simple way of keeping track of tasks, events, and other noteworthy matters. It’s a method that I like and it allows for monthly goals, not just daily goals.
I wrote down a number of goals for January, ranging from ambitious and exciting to mundane. One of my goals was to make bread in our family’s bread maker ten times. Our family was given a used bread maker a few years ago from someone who picked it up at a thrift store. We had not been praying for a bread maker but somehow became the lucky recipients nonetheless. We had used it a few times with more or less good results but it mostly sat on the shelf out of the way. I have four children, soon to be five, and food costs get expensive fast. My goal was simple: use the bread maker. The reason was simple: it saves money.
With a little bit of effort and some creativity, I achieved my goal of making bread ten times in January. A number of times, I felt lazy so I asked one of my kids to help. Basically, I would tell them what to do and they would do it, usually wrong at first, and then we’d get it right together. The added benefit of doing this was that my two oldest children, aged twelve and nine, learned how to make bread on their own. By February, they were able to make bread on their own. My wife even made a schedule for chores and one of those chores is making bread. Today, someone in our household makes bread every day. I’ve even branched out and made bagels and doughnuts. It’s been great.
Anyways, I made a point of taking care of a small thing. The benefits that flowed from this decision are evident. The time I spent with the children, the skills they’ve learned, the responsibilities they’ve taken on, the compounded monthly savings, and the sense of accomplishment in me learning new skills are fairly big things that ended up being accomplished by my decision to take care of a small thing.
There’s a verse that comes to my mind when I think about doing small things:
“Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” (Matthew 23:23, KJV).
I only want to focus on one tiny part of the verse: “and not to leave the other undone.” It’s about the Pharisees tithing their herbs. And it’s something Jesus says they should do along with the weightier things like judgment, mercy, and faith. Notice that Jesus does not say that they shouldn’t tithe their herbs since judgment, mercy, and faith are so much more important. He says they should. It’s not the main point of what he’s saying to them but it’s there.
I’ve noticed a tendency in modern society to delegitimize small things. If someone has a genuinely good argument for some kind of small thing, rather than try to refute that argument, another person may simply concede the issue and then point out that the small thing for which the person was arguing is in fact small. And small things should give way to big things. Therefore, there’s no point in ever making an argument for small things.
Let me put it this way. There are many benefits to growing a vegetable garden. You get exercise, outdoor time, and vegetables, for example. So, I encourage you all to grow a garden. But you may say to me that the time and energy invested in growing a garden could better be spent doing other things, like spending time with children or grandchildren, communing with God, involving one’s self in church work, investing in advancing one’s career or education, etc. Therefore, while growing a garden is certainly good, and you have no disagreement with me there, there are more important things to do. A garden is a small thing. There are bigger things. Because there are bigger things, there’s no point to growing a garden – it would only detract from the big things.
This may appear to be a challenging argument but it falls apart for at least two reasons.
First, we literally cannot always do big things. In practice, no human being finds a collection of truly big things and does them all the time. We need to rest and sleep. We need to take breaks. Our bodies and minds require us not to do big things on a constant basis. We need to keep all things in balance. Remember that sabbath is a commandment, not a suggestion. It’s a requirement to cease work to focus on rest, study, and fellowship. Work may be big but we cannot give it our constant attention unless we are prepared to disobey God.
Second, our knowledge is limited. We are often wrong about what a big thing is and what a small thing is. If I applied the logic of only doing the things that I perceived as big, I probably wouldn’t write this article. My children are more important to me than me writing this article but I’m still writing the article. Things also change over time and we go through different seasons. Something that’s big in one season may be small in another and vice versa. Imagine for a minute that you have been stressed and overworked for years. You are approaching burn out. At one point in time, taking on a fresh challenge may have been exactly what you needed but perhaps not now. Taking a break, doing nothing, might actually be the most important thing a person can do in some seasons. Our knowledge is limited.
I’d like to close with some practical advice. If we set goals poorly then we will fail. If we write down on a piece of paper, “I resolve to do more exercise,” then we’ve already lost. There’s no way to measure accomplishment. But if we write down, “Exercise once this week for fifteen minutes,” then we are much closer to success. Here’s why – it’s small and it’s measurable. Remember the bread. I did not write, “I resolve to use the bread maker more.” I wrote down, “Make bread ten times in January.” It was measurable. And I did not write down, “Make bread every day in January.” That would be too big. I set a small, measurable goal and I achieved it. Besides actually making ten loaves of bread, now the entire family has a system of bread production that is sustainable. We watched a habit evolve out of setting a small, measurable goal.
In conclusion, being faithful with the little things helps focus our energies by taking us out of the frenzy of the day-to-day. We can look at one small thing, do it, and see that it is done. We feel a sense of accomplishment. This is good for our mental health and so is the feeling of having a healthy degree of control over what falls under our purview. And when we take on the small things, before we know it we are taking on the big things. The skills that we learn by tending to the little things are the same skills that we use to tend to the big things.
I encourage you, brothers and sisters, be faithful in the little things and watch as God entrusts you with the bigger things.
Dawson McKay is a lawyer from Kelowna, British Columbia who now practices in Port Hardy, presently working for the Provincial Crown. After attending the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University as a mature student, Dawson graduated and returned to Kelowna to do his articles at a private firm. He is a family man and has a loving wife and four children, two girls and two boys. Dawson enjoys hiking, open-water swimming, snow-shoeing, and travelling.