Lectionary Calendar
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
Maundy Thursday
There are 3 days til Easter!
Attention!
We are taking food to Ukrainians still living near the front lines. You can help by getting your church involved.
Click to donate today!

Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: March 28th

Resource Toolbox

THE GREATNESS OF TRIFLES

And they compel one passing by, Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with Him, that he might bear His cross. - Mark 15:21

How little these people knew that they were making this man immortal! What a strange fate that is which has befallen those persons in the Gospel narrative, who for an instant came into contact with Jesus Christ. Like ships passing across the white splendor of the moonlight on the sea, they gleam silvery pure for a moment as they cross the track, and then are lost and swallowed up again in the darkness.

This man Simon, fortuitously, as men say, meeting the little procession at the gate of the city, for an instant is caught in the radiance of the light, and stands out visible for evermore to all the world; and then sinks into the blackness, and we know no more about him. This brief glimpse tells us very little, and yet the man and his act and its consequences may be worth thinking about. If that man had started from the little village where he lived five minutes earlier or later, if he had walked a little faster or slower, if he had happened to be lodging on the other side of Jerusalem, or if the whim had taken him to go in at another gate, or if the centurion’s eye had not chanced to alight on him in the crowd, or if the centurion’s fancy had picked out somebody else to carry the cross - then all his life would have been different. And so it is always. You go down one turning rather than another, and your whole career is coloured thereby. You miss a train, and you save your life. Our lives are like the Cornish rocking stones, pivoted on little points. The most apparently insignificant things have got such a strange knack of suddenly developing unexpected consequences, and turning out to be, not small things at all, but great and decisive and fruitful.

And so let us draw from that thought such lessons as these. Let us look with ever fresh wonder on this marvellous contexture of human life, and on Him that molds it all to His own perfect purposes. Let us bring the highest and largest principles to bear on the smallest events and circumstances, for you never can tell which of these is going to turn out a revolutionary and formative influence in your life. And if the highest and the holiest Christian principle is not brought to bear upon the trifles, depend upon it it will never be brought to bear upon the mighty things.

Indeed, in one sense life is made up of trifles: and if the highest religious motives are not brought to bear upon the trifles of life, they will very seldom be brought to bear at all, and life, which is divided into grains like the sand, will have gone by with him while he is preparing for the big events which he thinks worthy of being regulated by lofty principles. Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves. Look after the trifles, for the law of life is like that which is laid down by the psalmist about the kingdom of Jesus Christ: "There shall be a handful of corn in the earth," a little seed sown in an apparently ungenial place " on the top of the mountains." Aye! but this will come of it, " the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon," and the great harvest of benediction or of curse, of joy or of sorrow, will come from the minute seeds that are sown in the great trifles of your daily life.

Subscribe …
Get the latest devotional delivered straight to your inbox every week by signing up for the "Music For the Soul" subscription list. Simply provide your email address below, click on "Subscribe!", and you'll receive a confirmation email from us. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your subscription to this list.
adsfree-icon
Ads FreeProfile