Stuff About Little Things

I am writing off the top of my head tonight, but just getting ready to wind down for the evening and reflecting on my life and ... well ... stuff.

I was out tonight drowning a few nightcrawlers in Lake St. Clair to no avail whatsoever. But it was a beautiful evening to be on the water. The temperature was great and the sun was in and out behind the clouds. While I was out there, my mind was thinking about water. Ironic, isn't it? On a 250,000 acre lake, there must be millions of gallons of water. I guess I could do the math if I were that interested, but I'm not ... mainly because my thoughts tonight are not about the big things, but rather about the little things.

A little stream of water can do great damage. It can crack a sidewalk when it freezes; it can erode dirt and stream it across a sidewalk; it can be obnoxious when you have to listen to it run down a downspout or drip in a sink. But that same little stream can bring great benefits. It can water a delicate plant; it can fill a glass for a cool drink; it can be used to give a baby a bath. The value of a little stream of water depends on its use and on our ability to control it.

Often in life, it isn't the big things that cause problems. It is the little things. Far too often, we allow the little things to go unchecked in our lives, probably because they are little. But those little things grow up to be big things. And big things can do great damage. Little actions repeated over and over become patterns of thinking and doing. They become so ingrained in our personality and life choices that we often do not even realize that the "little thing" still affects us. But it does. And it brings great danger. The "little thing" is at first easy to control, but when you pile a hundred or a thousand of the same "little things" into your life, you have created a beast. And that beast, whether good or bad, will determine how you handle the floods of life.

You see, character—who we really are—isn't built in the floods of life. Anyone can show up in a crisis. True character is built day after day in the small streams. These "little things" probably seem insignificant. But when you add them up, they determine our direction and stamina for life. Our handling of the "little things" is how we develop character. When we direct those small things after the heart and mind of God, we develop godly character. Then, when the floods of life come, we can stand because we have built our life in the small streams.