I’ve been watching a small bird build a nest in our garage. It’s clearly not a safe place for such a thing, even though she found a comfortable, cozy corner. So, I’ve been shutting the garage more frequently to hinder her labor.
It’s painful to watch, to be honest. She flies out when the door starts going down and sits perched on a lounge chair with a mouth full of twigs. Amazingly, she comes back to the same spot, waiting for the garage to open, and each time with branches in her beak ready to do the necessary work.
As I watched the bird one morning, I sat with student papers in front of me that needed grading. I also had a grad school paper pulled up on my computer that required more work. Only moments before I was complaining about these menial tasks that I knew would take a lot of time. I looked at the bird perched with a mouth full of twigs, and then I stared down at my papers. We both had tedious tasks to complete.
Loathing the Little Things
The work that produces immediate results doesn’t quite require the amount of energy needed for the smaller, menial tasks necessary for long-term “building.” Whether it’s tutoring someone who is just not understanding, learning a new instrument, teaching a child how to do the laundry, or editing a project, these “little things” that don’t produce immediate results can become frustrating and often leave us feeling discouraged.
In the Old Testament the Israelites experienced a similar sentiment when they returned to Jerusalem, their home, after living in exile for seventy years. Not surprisingly, they were deeply glad to return; in fact, other nations noticed their great rejoicing as they headed home and said about their praise, “The Lord has done great things for them!” (Ps. 126:2).
But the rejoicing stopped when they took in the wasteland before them. Jerusalem had been burned to the ground, and because of this, there was nothing left but rubble and debris. In order to rebuild what they once had, hard, tedious work was required. I imagine it was easy to complain and become discouraged as day after day they put down brick after brick, one menial job after another.
And yet, God tells his people, through an angelic messenger, that as they work to rebuild the temple, they should not despise the day of small things (Zech. 4:10). God could have provided an instantaneous, miraculous rebuild for His people, allowing them to skip all the tedious tasks. So, why didn’t He?
Miraculous Meaning in the Little Things
The Lord knew that the years of small tasks would eventually lead to great and awesome rejoicing when that last stone was laid and the new temple was complete. God works in and through the seemingly small responsibilities in ways that are beyond our understanding. The work is never merely about the end result.
It’s the faithful process to a task that grows and matures our faith. The Lord worked in the Israelites as they lay bricks and mixed mortar just as much as he worked through their long-term labor that eventually produced a new temple.
In His gracious and sovereign plan, the Lord puts smaller tasks in our lives to shape, teach, and prepare us for something greater that is to come. The Lord prepared me for a future in music ministry as I sat on a piano bench struggling through the time it took to learn the notes. And the long hours of writing and rewriting papers for my college English classes taught me the patience needed to have a writing ministry which I love and am so grateful for. And over time, I learned more about the sacrificial love of Jesus as I sat by my mom’s bedside and fed her day after day when she was no longer able to put the spoon to her own mouth. It’s in these mundane days that are filled with small things in which the Lord works in grand and unexpected ways.
The temptation is to think that the small tasks in the day don’t matter to God. We moan and grumble, waiting for God to do His real work by giving us what we deem bigger and better than the menial tasks begging for completion. And this is exactly what the enemy would like us to believe. Charles Spurgeon once said, “Satan fears the day of small things in our lives because he sees what great things God does in them and brings out of them.”
God is good and does great things through our faithfulness to the small tasks. None of it is meaningless, and none of it is without purpose. One branch at a time, we put our hands to use doing the daily jobs that are ahead of us in today and trust, with faith, that the Lord is using them to build something beautiful.
