The Small Things

As a young boy, I grew up in a wonderful Baptist church in Los Gatos, California. Calvary Baptist Church was surrounded by the orchards that once filled the densely populated Silicon Valley of today.

Our church had a traditional sanctuary with stained glass windows and pews. The sanctuary sloped down toward the platform.  At the end of each sermon, our pastor, Dr. Blaine Bishop, would have someone dismiss the service in prayer. As the prayer of dismissal was being prayed and all our heads were bowed, pastor Bishop would quietly walk up the aisle to the back of the sanctuary where he would stand and greet people as they left the building.  I would always squint through my faked look of prayer to watch my pastor walk up the aisle past the place where our family would normally sit.  As our pastor passed by he would discreetly remove a mint from his pocket and slip it into his mouth to freshen his breath after preaching.

As a young boy that small act of preparation caught my attention. I learned from that wonderful man to not forget the small things.  Most of us wonder what large and significant thing we will accomplish in life, but the truth is it is the smallest of things that can have the greatest impact and leave the most significant impression.

Today, inventory your life. Make sure the expansive landscape of your earthly experience is filled with a lot of small things done with a heart of service. When all is said and done maybe what you thought was done in private would be seen by someone and be one of the things used by God to invite them to follow in your footsteps.

To this day, after each time I preach, I reach into my pocket to find the mint I placed there earlier as I ran through my checklist to make myself ready to share God’s word. The small things do matter.