Happy Advent, Dear Friends,
If you look back across the pages of history, you will discover many places where the course of nations and even the world often hinged on a seemingly insignificant detail. On April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln was shot by a young actor named John Wilkes Booth. There is a strange story about that fateful night.
The Lincoln family had planned to spend the evening at the National Theater watching a play about the antics of a famed show horse. Early that afternoon, however, Mrs. Lincoln decided that she and her husband would attend another play instead — one being staged at Ford’s Theater. She sent a messenger to obtain tickets. As the messenger made his purchase, Booth overheard the transaction. In that moment Booth hatched one of the most wretched plots in American history. A few moments after 10:00 that night, he fired the fatal shot. The next morning President Lincoln was dead. The course of our history was altered because of a last-minute change in theater plans. One wonders what might have happened if President and Mrs. Lincoln had seen the other play.
You run into something like this in lots of places. Once a man was walking down a street in New York City. Lost in his thoughts, he came to a busy intersection. Unaware that the lights had changed, he stepped into the path of passing traffic. Nearby stood a cab driver who saw the man in danger. At the last moment the driver pulled the man to safety. The world may not remember the name of that cab driver, but it will never forget the man who was pulled to safety that night in New York. In the darkest hours of England’s history, he pleaded with his nation to die rather than surrender. We still recall this man’s gravelly voice as he stood in the British Parliament and promised England its “finest hour.” But on that night in New York, the life of Winston Churchill was in the hands of a cab driver.
We never really know the significance of an event, whether it seems great or small. A long time ago the carpenter from Nazareth told his friends that the way to change the world was by giving attention to the little things. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much,” Jesus said, “and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (Luke 16:10). If you are faithful in small matters, you will also be faithful in significant ones. Long ago G. A. Studdert put it this way:
Sometimes I wish that I might do
Just one grand deed and die.
And by that deed reach up
To meet God in the sky.
But such is not thy way, O God,
Nor such is thy decree.
But deed by deed and tear by tear
Our souls must climb to thee.
It often works that way. Our lives and our world are sometimes changed by massive events of grand importance. But most often the change is gradual. People who take time to do the small things are usually the winners, and the world is a better place because they lived.
It’s the little things that often change the world,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
