That Stinkin' Little Fan

by Phil Ware

Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won't be faithful in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities. (Luke 16:10 NLT)

    November and December decided to be the meltdown months for anything mechanical in the Warehouse. First it was the hot water heater that burst in the attic. Then it was one car, then another, and then the third. Then the disposal fell out of the sink. To top it all off, the counter top range decided to arc out and destroy the control panel. I guess that's what happens when you have three cars with 100,000 miles on them and you live in a ten-year old house where nothing major had ever been replaced! Of course this would have been challenging enough, but we were getting ready for a wedding, Christmas guests, moving our son, and college graduation.

    During this whole journey through melt down, I learned something pretty important (in addition to a few new corollaries to Murphy's Law): a $9 fan or a $2 switch can shutdown the $900 down draft cooktop.

    Believe me, this not theoretical knowledge! No matter how hard you work or how carefully you do something, little things, even things for which you have no responsibility, can blow the whole deal!

    I'm not sure if it is an ingrained part of human nature or just something we've learned through our time in the world, but most of us human beings cut a few corners here and there. Most of us don't do it on the big stuff or the important stuff. But on "meaningless little things," you know "things that don't really matter," we sometimes let our standards and values slide a little. After all, we don't want to be too uptight or be perceived as weird.

    Yeah, and I didn't think much about that $9 fan or that $2 switch until they sabotaged hours and hours of work and ruined a beatiful cooktop stove!

    Little things matter to God. They are the testing ground of our reliability and character. "Be faithful in little and I will trust you with much," Jesus teaches us through his parable. (Luke 19:11-17 NLT) So I want to suggest that we start the year adding a key principle to all of our resolutions and new commitments: "Sweat the little things."

    Character is what we do when no one else is looking. Faithfulness is how we do what we do when it appears it's not an important matter. Little things may not be important in comparison to big things, unless they don't work and keep the big things from happening or if they reveal some character flaw in us.

    God wants us to know that when we're faithful in those $9 fan issues, then he blesses us with the $900 stove issues. But when we aren't faithful... Well, let's just say no amount work can make that stove work until the little issues are mastered!

Posted: 01/07/2002
URL: http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200201/20020107_fan.html

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