We often ask ourselves …

Does it really matter if I pick up that little string on the floor? Someone else will pick it up later …

Does it really matter that I missed one little bit of food on the plate? Surely no one will notice …

Does it really matter if I spend two more seconds read my book, even though my mother just called me? After all it’s only one more little sentence …

Do any of these questions sound familiar to you? They are to me …more than I’d like to remember! ? Sometime I think the devil likes to tell us these little lies. It makes me think of Genesis, back in the Garden of Eden. Eve was standing at the tree, the serpent beguiled her into taking of the fruit. Was it so bad a sin? It was only a “Little bite” of fruit after all …

I just read in the book “Gaining Favor with God and Man” by William Thayer, the following quote: “Little sins sap the foundation of principles and lead to greater sins. Cheating to the amount of one cent violates the divine law as much as swindling to the amount of a hundred dollars. The wrong does not lie in the amount involved. The stealing of a pin violates the law ‘thou shalt not steal,’ as really as the taking of a dollar. ‘He who is unjust in the least, is unjust in much;’ That is, he acts upon the same principle that he would in perpetrating far greater sins. Indeed, he who does wrong for a small gain, may incur the highest criminality, since he yields to the smallest temptation, thereby showing a readier disposition to sin.”

Little sins lead up to big sins, and little things undone, lead up to big things undone.

So often we think, “I have no amazing talent like so and so. I can’t play piano like Beethoven. Or paint pictures like Michelangelo. Nor can I write as well as Shakespeare …”

I would like to tell you something … it doesn’t matter! Even the ‘little things you can do’ can mean something big to someone else. Martin Luther King made this statement:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare composed poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who did his job well.’”

But lest we should sit here all day quoting people let us look at what Christ said …

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the story of the Talents. A man called his servants and gave one servant five talents, another servant two talents, and the last servant one. The man then left the country and when he returned he asked each of the servants to give an account of what they had done with his money while he was gone. The servant with five talents had since then gained five more talents, for a total of ten. The second servant had also doubled his talents, but the third servant for fear had gone and hid his in the ground, and had nothing for his lord besides this one. An interesting statement is made to the first two servants… “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” The Third Servant is then rebuked for his ill use of the talent, and the “little talent” is taken from the third servant and given to the servant with ten.

It does not matter the magnitude of the job, but how well the job is done. I often think, “If I where called to go be a missionary in China like Gladys Aylward, I’d go! If God would only give me something great to do, I’d do it with all my might!”

But just a few minutes earlier, I have been rude to my mother, violating the “little commandment” “honor thy father and thy mother”… We may not have any “great” job to do. But we can do our ‘little’ jobs well.

After all even a ‘little’ work well done for the Kingdom of Heaven, is a work well done none the less.

“Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” – Matthew 25:40