Little Things

The Great Wall of China is really just a lot of lit­tle bricks. The same is true for the great build­ings of the world. The pyra­mids are a lot of big bricks placed by a whole lot of lit­tle hands. There are Roman roads still in use. Each stone was placed by unknown work­ers that lived on pen­nies per day. Rock trails built by CCC work­ers of the Great Depres­sion are still in use in our National Parks. Great things are just small things done well.

Addic­tion and grandios­ity go hand in hand. Peo­ple get lost in their heads. They try to see it all from some grand posi­tion or lose them­selves by admir­ing peo­ple “above them” that they will never know — peo­ple entirely out­side of their con­text. Find­ing san­ity, sobri­ety, and the Cre­ator is in the sim­ple things of life. God truly is in the details. The peo­ple that count most are the ones you come to know face to face.

In the movie Bruce Almighty, God appears as a man mop­ping a floor in an empty office build­ing. God (played splen­didly by Mor­gan Free­man) says, “Some of the hap­pi­est peo­ple in the world go home at night smelling to high heaven.” You can­not argue with that line. Jesus the Car­pen­ter must have gone home at night with all the aroma of a sweaty, grimy, day laborer in a land with lit­tle water. God was mak­ing a point: Car­pen­ter for twenty-five years — Mes­siah for three (Jesus’ career as car­pen­ter began at age five by Jew­ish custom).

There is a rea­son I do not work with or want sec­re­tar­ial help. The lit­tle tasks around the office are ther­a­peu­tic. They also keep me grounded. I clean around the build­ing a lit­tle through the week too. The chores at the par­son­age are all mine — on pur­pose. In seminary/graduate school, it was my job as a jan­i­tor that kept me sane. It also helped my prayer life.

Today will con­sist of a thou­sand lit­tle things. I will do them one at a time. Those lit­tle things are shap­ing a soul that will out­last the Seven Won­ders of the World. You are doing the same thing. The point of the Incar­na­tion was to restore dig­nity to all the lit­tle things that make us human.