It was Mother Teresa who said, “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” And yet seems to go completely against human nature. We don’t want to do small things. We want to do big things! Huge things!
I don’t know if it’s our pride or our compassion (or some combination of the two) but little things don’t seem to cut it. It’s almost as though the small things aren’t worth it, that they don’t make a “big enough” difference. We all want to change the world, but how many of us believe we can? We think in terms of the big picture, in terms of big things, and suddenly the desire for big change is overwhelmed the size of the effort and resources and (insert your favorite obstacle here) that would be required. And sadly, most of the time, we are either paralyzed or demoralized into doing nothing.
Mother Teresa had it right (I know, hardly a shocker) – we must do small things. We must overcome the thoughts that tell us no to bother, or that it won’t matter and fight the small battles. Jesus did. We (naturally) tend to think of Jesus as rising from the dead and performing miracles, but He did millions of small things that we can look to as hope and/or inspiration when we need it.
Remember that Jesus spent 30 years in the small town of Nazareth. I can guarantee you two things. One, that He did lots of small things there. And two, that He did them all with great love. Picking up supplies for His carpentry work, going to the market, hundreds of small acts to make life easier for Mary and Joseph – there are so many things He did not fit for the Redeemer of the world! But He did them anyway, and He did them with great love. May this thought inspire us to live our lives doing the small things, since after all, “to God there is nothing small.”
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