Start Small

Last Saturday I finished the Old Testament as I continue to work towards my goal of reading through the Bible twice this year. As I read my way through the short books towards the end of the Old Testament which we call the Minor Prophets, familiar passages would jump out at me like old friends. One of these passages was from the book of Zechariah:

“For who hath despised the day of small things? For they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.” (4:10)

Now, that might seem an odd verse to have as a friend, but if you focus on the question at the beginning, you might see where I’m headed. The context of this passage is the unfinished temple which the newly-returned Jewish people needed to complete.

There is much to chapter 4 and this particular verse which I cannot go into this time—it would take far more space than comfortably fits in a blog post to do it justice.  Essentially, God is highlighting Zerubbabel as the leader He has chosen to lead the work of rebuilding the temple (thus the plummet, or plumb line in his hand) and is also declaring the fact that the work will be completed. Apparently, the people were procrastinating, thinking it was too big a job for them to finish.

When I read the verse a week ago, I smiled at the familiarness of it, but it didn’t really hit my heart until Sunday. I was listening to a sermon on a podcast in the afternoon, when my thoughts turned to the change God has brought about in my life. (See the post from two weeks ago for a little more on that.)

I realized that, although there are specific moments I can point to as times when God got my attention about an area He wanted me to change, it was the “small things,” the moment-by-moment decisions that built up to the major change I now see looking back.

I remember the day I felt bewildered about how to obey God in my life, and I decided to just obey in every little thing I thought God was asking of me, figuring that as I did that, maybe I would figure out what God’s will was for the bigger areas of life like what college to attend, or what I was supposed to do with my life.

Those small decisions (like choosing to put a garment back on a hanger in the thrift store when it fell off, instead of leaving it on the floor) were the foundation of my later obedience.

In that day, it seemed like a small thing to pick a sweater up off the floor, but it was one in a series of choices that added up to a big change.

The small decision to begin dressing more femininely to appear professional when teaching piano led to a major change in my entire attitude towards dress, to the point where someone who hadn’t seen me for a year literally didn’t believe I was the same person he had met before.

The small decision to immerse myself in classical music over a summer to help with my piano teacher training led to a major “aha” moment when I turned my old music on and could suddenly hear what it was actually communicating.

The small decision to show a few pages of “just for fun” writing to a friend resulted in a full-length novel which might just become a series.

Don’t get me wrong, there were major decisions as well, but they, too, required small decisions in order to follow through, like when I decided to stop reading fiction for a time to keep from diving back into the escape mechanism of my imagination.

That major decision, carried out through daily small decisions, gave God space to work in my heart and mind, to prepare me (and my imagination) for the work He had planned for me to do.

So, what are the “small things” God has used in your life to accomplish big things? What small decisions is the Holy Spirit calling you to make today?

For the Israelites who were despising the day of small things, the first “small thing” was to pick up their tools and get to work.

Maybe God has a task for you today that seems too big. If that’s the case, stop despising the smallness of your first step: ask God for help, and get to work!

“Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it.” 

1 Thessalonians 5:24