The Little Big Stories

There are many para­doxes in life. Jesus spoke of some of them. He pointed out that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” on a num­ber of occa­sions. There are sur­pris­ing rever­sals all around us. Things we con­sider small are actu­ally very large — given time and cir­cum­stances. A kind word to a child may, in the long run, have more actual impact on human­ity than some great polit­i­cal address.

On any given day, you encounter God through lit­tle episodes that you usu­ally ignore. Later, some of those events-as-parables return to your mind. They serve as per­sonal inte­gra­tive con­nect­ing points. I remem­ber once hav­ing to take a plas­tic con­tainer out of my car and walk across a pas­ture to a cat­tle water­ing hole to get water for my car’s radi­a­tor. It was a hot Okla­homa day. I was pretty matter-of-fact about it. In fact, I was rather annoyed. The car I was dri­ving was not all that old, but it had been an end­less source of mild miseries.

Hav­ing to walk away from all of the car and traf­fic noises into a cow pas­ture reg­is­tered with me. I was back in nature and away from the noisy travel machines of the “mod­ern” era. The walk to and from the pond was only a few min­utes, but it became a reflec­tion of the peace you find when you depart from the mechan­i­cal rou­tines of life. It was a noth­ing inci­dent that became a sub­tle reminder to me of how alien­ated we truly are from that which is so car­ing and constant.

Given time, I think I could recall hun­dreds of such inci­dents. The soul has a way of stop­ping along the way to embrace eter­nal qual­i­ties. Chil­dren live in these sto­ries all of the time. The school bus ride, air­ing up the tires on an old bicy­cle, bump­ing into a snake, or find­ing an old lost toy can become the most amaz­ingly real­ized soul moment. The events in and of them­selves seem insignif­i­cant, but they can live on in our lives as reminders of sim­plic­ity, con­nect­ed­ness, and even immortality.

Today you will cross tiny thresh­olds into lit­tle events — seem­ingly insignif­i­cant cir­cum­stances and occa­sions. From them your soul will derive great insights. Pay atten­tion. These lit­tle sto­ries are the big story of life in abbreviation.