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The Small Stuff

by Kevin Pauley  
6/21/2007 / Christian Living

Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, since you are unleavened. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old yeast, or with the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. - 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 HCSB

In Africa, there are many strange and splendid creatures. I used to have a pet chimpanzee named Julius who would go to church, sit on the pew (a log with the top shaved flat) and sing with the rest of us. I owned a miniature antelope, called a Dik Dik, that would knock on the door if it wanted in or out.

Many African creatures were not nearly so cuddly. There are spiders large enough to hunt birds. A scorpion stung my mother on the foot and she nearly died. I remember her foot being the size of a football. Army ants will march across the jungle in columns 10 to 15 feet across and an eighth of a mile long. Do you have any idea how many ants it takes to create such a sight? Neither do I. All I know is when they come through, you don't try to stop them. You simply move yourself and anything you want to save out of the way and let them pass. It actually is a benefit to have them come. They go through the mud huts and eat all the spiders, lice, roaches, and scorpions, leaving you a clean house to move back into.

However, do you know what the scariest thing of all was? Little bugs you can barely see like mosquitoes and tsetse flies. I remember seeing swarms of flies so thick they cast a shadow on the ground. They all carry terrible, deadly diseases. Something that small is difficult to fight and they are all over the place. They swarm over you until you get this feeling of panic.

It's not usually the big sins that get you because you see them coming and either prepare for them or you step out of their way. People will usually rise to the occasion when the big stuff happens. What really gets us, what makes our marriages fail and our children lose faith, is the small stuff. A little yeast goes a long way. The rolled eyes when your wife says she's sorry for something; the little snide remarks and slams that start accumulating. The "not now honey, Daddy's busy" that's said all too often.

Life's little issues keep coming and coming, swarming over us until we do something stupid. Imitate the Africans. Put up screens in your life to keep the pests out. Don't take your job home so much. Don't let your church or volunteer organization keep you from your kids. Take care of the little things and the big ones are no sweat.

written by Pastor Kevin Pauley - permission to reprint.
Kevin Pauley is a minister and a freelance writer living in Illinois with his wife and five children.
www.pastorpauley.com

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