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April 24, 2008
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=========================== TODAY'S ARTICLE ==========================
Sweat the Small Stuff: It's the Big Stuff, by Ann Voskamp
"It's a design flaw."
My mother's words drift from the sink, her milky white hands scrubbing
dishes, skillet and spatula immersed under suds, and I'm searching.
Cabinets banging shut, pots clattering, enamelware clanging. "Yes, I
agree, a design flaw. Such a little piece, and if it's lost, the entire
appliance is rendered useless." I shuffle cutlery about, wondering if
the child who responsibly put away the dishes may have inadvertently
dropped that wee center gizmo for the Bosch food processor in here. Or
here? "It's like the weight that sits atop the pressure cooker," I
mutter, rifling through oven mitts. "If you don't have that little
piece, all grinds to a halt."
I turn to Mama, looking upon her crown of white suspended over
stainless steel scoured. She feels the look close and receives it with
warm eyes, eyebrows arched, inviting thoughts to step out into the
open, and through.
So they do: "I think little things are actually the big things."
Little things like weights for pressure cookers, gizmos for processors,
easy smiles for children, and long hugs for husbands. Peering into the
corner of cupboards, I think how little things are the minute gears
necessary to move the titanic arm of God, small things that move heavy
hearts.
Doesn't the significant, humble by its very nature, masquerade as the
insignificant?
And I realize, as I stand atop a chair to inspect a top cupboard, how
very wrong I am. This is no design flaw, but rather, the wisdom at the
heart of a Designer who values the least of these. "Little drops of
water, little grains of sand,
Makes the mighty ocean, and the beauteous land."
More than the little simply comprising one microscopic element of the
grandiose, the momentous moves by very virtue of that which is but a
moment. Or it is no more.
I scour a kitchen while Mama scours pots, and it buffs up, how moments
leverage a life and little acts of love, little resistances, little
noble stands, they wield this existence of ours. "And the little
moments, humble though they be, make the mighty ages of eternity." The
diminutive fuels the portentous, the seemingly unessential being in
fact the most essential of all.
I whisper a prayer for a little food processor gizmo?
I don't know why it comes, but that it is the peculiar ways of Him who
is Spirit, but standing there at a loss in the kitchen, having a
processor assembled with all the pieces save for a singular,
unremarkable piece, I see with startling clarity that the loss of a
little thing like prayer immobilizes the entire scope of a life of
faith. When a life doesn't -- won't -- work, is prayer the integral
missing piece? Prayer appears disposable. And yet, a rudder under the
hulk of a life, hidden far below the waters, it steers—no, more:
propels -- a soul Homeward. Do I not pray more because I foolishly deem
the small thing inconsequential?
Doesn't the adage go to the effect, "Don't sweat the small stuff! And
it is all small stuff"? I understand the sentiment, and, in large
measure appreciate the directive. Yet sometimes I wonder, especially
when the misplacing of one small component of a kitchen appliance
brings a meal preparation to a standstill, if the small stuff, (which,
true, is much of life), isn't actually worthy of most of our attention.
Because much of life hinges on it.
Standing on tiptoe, feeling along a shelf, I whisper a prayer for a
little food processor gizmo. And fingers find it in a green
splatterware bowl, tucked back behind.
Mama's smile catches mine at the sound of this whirling processor.
On prayer's hub, we listen to life hum.
Father God, am I paying attention to life's smallest, biggest stuff?
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Photo: processor gizmo and pressure cooker weight found. Photo courtesy
of Holy Experience and Ann Voskamp.
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(c) 2008 Holy Experience <http://aholyexperience.com/>
RELATED LINKS:
* The Value of Small
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200711/20071115_small.html
* The Button Box
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200503/20050302_buttonbox.html
* Right Here, Right Now
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200604/20060422_rightnow.html
* Holy Experience
http://aholyexperience.com/
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200804/20080424_smallstuff.html
=========================== FEATURED PRODUCT =========================
THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE, by Rick Warren
Takes the message of The Purpose-Driven Church and shows us how to
apply it to our individual lives.
http://shopping.heartlight.org/cgi-shl/link?222
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