The Day of Small Things
THE most successful toilers are those who know best how to serve God in “small things.” The Almighty never “despises the day of small things,” or else he would not put his mighty oaks into acorns, or his golden grain-crops into little seed-bags.
1. Nearly all the greatest and best things had their feeble beginnings. The Mississippi begins as a rivulet; the splendid suspension bridge at Niagara first went over the deep chasm as a mere kite-string. And the noblest, holiest Christian lives had their origin in some word faithfully spoken, or in the reading of a tract, or the offering of a broken and brief prayer, or in a solemn resolution to quit favorite sins and yield to Jesus. One sentence seems to have brought Peter and John to follow Christ. One sentence converted the jailer of Philippi. Now if every Christian life sprouted out of the act of a single hoiu”, and was probably the result of some humble agency, then it is a sin and a folly to “despise the day of small things.”
Cases to illustrate this truth thicken in our memory. A godly woman spoke kindly to her maid-servant about her soul: the gardener overheard the conversation through a hedge, and was himself convicted of his sins. Stray arrows often hit the mark.
The late Dr. William Wisner once stopped on a hot summer day at a Berkshire farm-house for a glass of water. He talked faithfully with the young lady who gave him the refreshing draught, and directed her to the “living water.” Long years afterwards, a middle-aged woman introduced herself to Dr.
W on a steamboat, and thanked him for
the plain, kind word that brought her to the Saviour.
Harlan Page, coming early to a meeting, found a stranger sitting there, and politely spoke to him. The conversation went on until the man — who said that “Christians had always kept him at arm’s length” before — was melted into penitence.
On the last day of the year 1867, I met a man of fifty in the streets, and said to him, “Had not you and I better begin the new year with a new life?” That simple remark set him to thinking, and resulted in his conversion.
The lesson of all these cases, and of innumerable others like them, is that the most effectual way to save sinners is to use the day of small things, and seize our opportunities. Nearly all revivals start with a single man or woman. One live coal can kindle a great flame.
2. There is another view of this matter. As the usefulness of a Christian grows out of little deeds well done, so the influence of many Christians is terribly poisoned by little sins. Alas! how great sinners we may be in small things! Little irritations of look and manner; little meannesses in our daily dealings; little fibs and insincerities of speech; little jealousies and spites; little neglects of kind acts we might do, — all these are the “little foxes” that have spoiled many a goodly vine. Pile up enough tiny snow-flakes on a rail-way track, and they will blockade the most powerful locomotive. So I verily believe that the aggregate sum of Christians’ daily inconsistencies and neglects of duty often block up a revival, and stay the progress of Christ’s kingdom. Jesus Christ laid great emphasis on “keeping the least of his commandments.” That was an awfully mischievous spark that lighted Chicago into a blaze; but it was once only a spark!
3. This brings me to say to the unconverted, It is a fatal mistake to think that any wilful sin is a trifle. If you are lost, my dear friend, it is not likely that one huge crime like Judas’, or Pilate’s, or Ananias’, will sink you to perdition. It will be the sum of your daily sins left unrepented of, the aggregate of thousands of offences against God’s law and God’s love. I pray you, do not say, “Oh, this is not much.!” No sin is a trifle. No sin is harmless. In Sudbrook Park, England, a naturalist saw a small worm boring into the bark of a stately sycamore-tree. “If that worm is let alone” said he, “it will kill the tree.” The experiment was tried. The next year the leaves turned yellow, and the year after the tree was a skeleton. Now if one sin is so deadly, what must a lifetime of sin be 1
My last thought is that life is a series of steps. Each step counts. Coming to Jesus is a single step. It may be the work of a moment. It may turn on a small pivot. And you will never come to Christ, or never reach heaven, while you continue to “despise the day of small things.”