“Do not despise the day of small things.”
It was on a train journey 30 years ago from Bangor to Portadown, Northern Ireland that I first came across the words in the title. I was reading a book and the words stood out. They are taken from a little read book of Zachariah.
I was a small boy and now I am a small man maybe that is one of the reasons this verse stayed with me. Perhaps I dropped ‘the day of’. I have always valued small things be they gestures or gifts. It was the small screw that a client made that made the cot functional. It was 50 peseta that Connie gave me that bought me an ice-cream when I stopped at a Spanish train station on the way from Paris to Lisboa.
It is the small things that grow into the bigger things whether that be in size or magnitude. I can still remember the chart in my first class when my name appeared when I could tie my shoelaces and zip up my coat. It was a small Salvation Army Sunday school in which I spoke at the age of 10 and crumbled. They asked me again and again I crumbled. I do not forget those small things for if they hadn’t happened I may never have spoken in public.
Whoever we are and whatever we are doing we can trace ourselves back to the day when what we are doing now or living started as a small thing. Did we despise it? I hope not if we did we can remember it now in a new light and give thanks for that day of small things.
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