“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much…” (NRSV, Luke 16:10)

St John the Baptist caused an enormous sensation in the populated areas of Palestine although he himself never entered them.  Evidence of the power both of his personality and of his fiery message is to be seen in the fact that the people went out to him – he did not have to go to them.  For, of the two particular points on the River Jordan where he baptised, one was some 20 miles east of Jerusalem and the other was some 50 miles farther north on the route to Galilee.

And there by the Jordan he hammered home what is the fundamental preliminary of anyone’s personal relationship with God – namely repentance.  Although the religious leaders sneered at this austere young hermit from the grim Judean desert, and said he had a devil in him, the vast crowds who flocked to him recognised instinctively that he was a man of God.  In St Mark’s words, “…all regarded John as truly a prophet” (NRSV, Mark 11:32).

Tax-collectors, fishermen, soldiers and people of many other occupations converged on the banks of the Jordan and when they had confessed their sins before John and had been baptised by him, they asked him what they had to do next.  To the tax-collectors who, as a matter of course, fleeced the public, he replied, “Don’t over-charge people”.  To the soldiers of the Roman army of occupation, he said, “No violence and no looting” (Luke 3:12-14).

Now when those tax-collectors and soldiers asked John the Baptist, “And we, what shall we do?” perhaps they expected him to prescribe some out-of-the-ordinary task for them to perform as a mark of their conversion.  If so they were disappointed.  There was nothing spectacular about the Baptist’s injunctions.  They were all concerned with what was, for the tax-collectors and soldiers, the routine of everyday life.  They had looked to the future,  John the Baptist put his finger firmly on the present.

So it is with our life as followers of Christ.  It is usually, and for some entirely, concerned with the little things of the present, and it is not difficult to see why that is.  The only time which we can call our own is the present moment.  The past is gone for ever and we are powerless to change it.  The future does not yet exist.  And so it is only by our use of the present that we can ever know Our Lord more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly.

Sometimes, however, we feel so dissatisfied with the present as to have no use for it at all and our interest is then concentrated on an imaginary future which we hope may one day materialise.  When we look at life like that we are living in a sort of interim period, and are treating the present, which is the only time that is real and that matters, as though it were a meaningless vacuum.

The unreality of such an attitude is obvious enough, and so Our Blessed Lord has with good reason told us to use what we actually have by living a day at a time (Matthew 6:34).  And St Paul similarly has told us to make the most of those opportunities for doing the will of God which God is giving us in the here and now (Ephesians 5:16) and not to let them slip, through waiting for more attractive ones which may never come.

For each day as it begins provides us with all we need to serve God as he wishes.  In the words of John Keble’s hymn:

The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we need to ask;
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us daily nearer God. (1)

For our actual opportunities will for the most part be confined to the ordinary and seemingly petty things of daily life; and since God wishes us to do his will whatever our circumstances, it is not for us to hanker after something out of the ordinary.  Sometimes, perhaps, we may wish that we could serve God in some very special way which as yet he has not thought fit to provide for us.  But such a wish is a mistaken one which really springs from self-love and presumption. (2)

To do great things for God requires great grace from God, and therefore, before hankering after such opportunities, we should do well to pause and consider what use we are making of God’s grace now in doing the little things which he actually requires.

How worthy of God is the worship which we offer to him in his House?  How much real love and trust and adoration do we actually give God?  How deep is our desire and how resolute our will to belong to God for him to use as he pleases?  And what of our life outside his Church?  To what degree is it marked by patience, charitableness, gentleness and good temper in the face of criticism, slights or provocation?

To prove our love for God in such things day in and day out requires greater courage and loyalty than might appear at first sight.  And until we have showed ourselves faithful in what we may regard as little things, God will not call us to do great things for him – if he does at all.

Not that anything can be little which the infinite greatness of God requires.  For if it is God’s will that we should do a particular thing for him, then at once that thing assumes an importance out of all proportion to its outward value. (3)

“The kindly forbearance towards another, the trifling victory over temper and passion, the self-denial in some little matter, the resistance to a dislike, the honest acknowledgement of a fault, the effort to be calm and even-tempered, the willingly accepted humiliation and censure, – all these things, be sure, are a more precious harvest than we are wont to think, provided they be wrought for the love of God”. (4) (our emphasis)

It is all summed up by the example of St Thérèse of Lisieux, the Carmelite nun and Little Flower of Jesus: “Love needs to be proved by action.  Well, even a little child can scatter flowers, to scent the throne-room with their fragrance…That shall be my life, to scatter flowers – to miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word, always doing the tiniest things right, and doing it for love”. (5)

References

1. Keble, J. (1822) New every morning is the love.  Available from:
http://www.hymnary.org/text/new_every_morning_is_the_love (Accessed 11 June 2012) (Internet).

2. Grou, J. (1952) Manual for interior souls, London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd.

3. Grou, J. (1952) Manual for interior souls, London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd.

4. St Francis de Sales (1616) trans. by Lear, H.L.S. (1890) Of the love of God, Book XII, Chapter VI,  London: Longmans Green, and Co.

5. St Thérèse of Lisieux (1895 – 1897) trans. by Knox, R. (1958) Autobiography of a Saint.  Thérèse of Lisieux, London: The Harvill Press.