Do you remember Aesop’s fable about the slave Androcles and the lion? A great and powerful beast was incapacitate by a little bitty splinter in his paw. The slave Androcles took the splinter out. One day the slave was captured and was to be thrown to a lion to eat him alive. But it was the lion he had helped that was in the arena. The lion fawned over Androcles and didn’t kill him. Click here to read the story. The fable was, “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” The point I want to make is not so much Androcles as the lion being incapacitated by a small thing.
Stay with me…
Part of Song of Solomon 2:15 reads this way… “(It’s) the little foxes that spoil the vineyards.”
Have you ever noticed that sometimes it’s the little things that bring us down? It’s not necessarily the huge, momentous, significant events that throw us off… but rather the little thing that we can easily overlook. It’s that little minute detail that no one pays much attention to that ends up causing us the most trouble.
Recently I was incapacitated by a small sliver of glass in my foot. I hobbled and limped around for a day until I… yes I (!)… performed surgery to remove it. This picture may not be the best quality, but it gives you an idea of how small it was. It’s that little speck on the end of the “surgical” needle that did the damage. Had I not removed it, infection could have set up and ultimatley could have done who knows how much damage to my entire body!
Now back to my point…
Sometimes it’s the small… tiny… miniscule… little things that do the most damage to us. It’s that insignificant thing we don’t think much about that ends up causing us the most trouble. And if that infinitesimal thing… whatever it is… isn’t removed from our life, one day we can be destroyed by it.
Our adversay is patient and smart. Lucifer is willing to put something small and seemingly harmless in our way. He’s wise enough to make it something that seems so innocent we overlook it. So we pick it up… make it a nominal part of our life… and it stays dormant for weeks, months, or years.
Then one day all hades breaks loose. We’re totally blindsided, surprised, and overwhelmed. Our life starts falling apart. Then we start looking for the cause. As we begin tracing things back to which domino caused the next one to fall… we end up finding something that at the time we thought was innocuous, but in hindsight was a ticking timebomb.
But the problem is… we usually don’t/can’t identify what those things are when they first come into our life. And that’s one reason we need God. Consider praying this prayer that David prayed in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
It’s the little foxes… it’s the small splinter… it’s the small sliver of glass we need to watch out for. So pray Psalm 139:23-24!
Ron, you write with clarity. Your words are so timely for anyone who dares to live for the King and His Kingdom. Thank you for opening my eyes to the small things around me. You bless me.