THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTEMPTING SMALL THINGS FOR GOD
On January 5, Alaska Airline’s flight 1282 was forced to make an emergency landing after a panel blew off the plane, endangering the lives of everyone on board. Preliminary reports attribute the near disaster to a failure to install a few panel bolts. How many bolts must there be on a huge passenger jet? There must be thousands of bolts on such planes. All it took was one or more missing bolts to trigger a potential catastrophe.
Last week, a nearly 1,000-ft container ship loaded with cargo lost power to its powerful propulsion system and drifted into a supporting column for the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor. I was transfixed as I watched videos of the bridge collapsing. I could not believe how quickly it could sink into the harbor. Causes for the ship’s loss of power are still being researched. Chances are, however, that just like Alaska Airline’s flight 1282, the origins lie in something small – a mechanical or electric failure or a human oversight that triggered a cascade of other failures across many systems.
Sometimes it’s small failures or mistakes that lead to huge disasters. Back in 1962, the United States launched its first interplanetary spacecraft, Mariner 1, to explore Venus. A few minutes after take-off the rocket began to wobble and then crashed into the sea. The cause of the multi-million-dollar disaster was a tiny coding error. A single character had been left out of the guidance equation.
As the old proverb and poem says:
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.
It’s easy to think the important things are big and obvious, but maybe small details are the most important things in our lives.
Early in the 19th century, William Carey kick-started the worldwide missionary movement with a sermon on Isaiah 54:2-3, “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.” One line in Carey’s sermon became a widely adopted church slogan: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.”
When the church was really being the church it attempted great things, we thought. This way of thinking was part of a whole “bigger is better” movement in American culture. Farmers were told, “get big or get out.” Small auto manufacturers consolidated into big conglomerates like General Motors. If you’re not a big celebrity, then you are a small nobody. It’s the big things that count. Not something small like a single bolt. Or one sparking wire. Or an individual “0” or “1” somewhere in a thousand lines of computer code. Or a small farm. Or a Christian community that isn’t a megachurch.
It’s an admirable sentiment to attempt big, challenging things. Too often we instead set goals and purposes for ourselves that are too small. Maybe we’d rather set a low bar and attain our goal instead of setting a higher one and then feeling disappointed or embarrassed when we fail. Or maybe we play small because we don’t think we are worthy or capable of anything other than modest undertakings. In such cases, we need to hear the words, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God,” if only to jolt us out of our complacency.
On the other hand, I’ve come to think we need another slogan as a counter-balance to Carey’s memorable directive. It would read like this: “Attempt Small Things for God.” We sometimes need to focus on doing small things well. It was the absence of one small bolt that sent flight 1282’s panel flying out into the open sky. It was likely a single inconspicuous failure that set off a cascade of events that resulted in a major east coast bridge collapsing into Baltimore Harbor. It was a single misplaced character in a complex computer code that blew up the rocket carrying Voyager 1 to Venus. Whoever says that only the big things matter and bigger is better overlooks to their peril the importance of small things.
In his parable of the rich manager, Jesus tells us, “whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” (Luke 16:10). He elsewhere reminds his disciples that small things like a mustard seed or a tiny speck of yeast have extraordinary power. (Matthew 13:31-33) Surprisingly big results unfold out of small things like these. Interestingly, Jesus’ parable about the power of yeast is considered one of his shortest parables. That itself should tell us something about the importance of attending to small things!
In the Book of James, the author uses an image relevant to the container ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The author describes how a small rudder controls great ships. He then goes on to compare the smallness of the human tongue to the great damage it can do. “Look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also, the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.” (James 3:4-5) As the legendary coach John Wooden once said, it’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen. We can’t attempt great things for God if we ignore the importance of doing small things with extraordinary care and intention.
When I look at First Congregational Church of East Longmeadow, I see a Christian community that is very faithful in small things: a bag of groceries brought for Kensington School, an used coat given as part of last fall’s coat drive; a lesson prepared for a Sunday school class; a check placed in the offering plate; a few dollars donated for a special project; the gift of song shared in a choir; an Easter flower dropped off to someone who is homebound; a church hall given over for a Saturday community training that may save someone’s life or create a Christmas memory for a child anxious to sit on Santa’s lap; a sign-up list to pick up winter’s debris around the rotary one Saturday in April. . . The list could go on and on.
They can all seem like small things to us as we are doing them week-by-week and month-by-month. But that doesn’t make them any less extraordinary in their results. It’s easy not to see ourselves as attempting anything great for God. Yet these small efforts add up to something wondrous: the miracle of resurrection shared, of lives honored and affirmed, of God’s work being done through our own wounded hands and feet and hearts.
It’s the small bolts in the plane that keep it flying safely. It’s the small wires in a ship’s powerful propulsion engines that insure it steers without mishap. It’s each and every character in a computer code that matters if the program is to run properly. It’s every one of our small acts of faithfulness in which we “attempt something small for God” that adds up into a big witness to God’s resurrection power at work among us.
Happy Easter season!
Pastor Thomas