Paying Attention to Small Details

Earlier this week a grandmother brought her granddaughter to our church parent and toddler group. She sent the little girl’s mother a picture of her enjoying ‘snack time’. She mis-typed the message; the child was enjoying ‘smack time’. A small detail makes a big difference!

This morning, I finished ‘Exodus’. It starts with Israel as slaves in Egypt. There’s lots of activity and narrative – Moses and the burning bush, plagues of frogs and locusts, the Passover, crossing the Red Sea, eating manna, receiving the ten commandments, making the golden calf…

The final chapters describe the creation of the tabernacle, the mobile temple. This morning, I read: ‘…they brought the tabernacle to Moses: the tent and all its furnishings, its clasps, frames, crossbars, posts and bases; the covering of ram skins dyed red…’ It’s like an instruction sheet for self-assembly furniture – the sort of detail that I usually skim over… but this detail is important.

This week I heard the old song ‘I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows’. It’s a song about belief and noticing the small details… ‘Every time I hear a newborn baby cry, or touch a leaf, of see the sky, then I know why I believe.’

Psalm 139 starts, ‘O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise…’ David’s writing about a personal God who knows the smallest, intimate detail of his life.

I love images created by the expression, ‘a bull in a china shop’. I know several people who live life like that. Today I’m musing on that attention to detail that walks carefully around the china shop, that’s sensitive to folks who make be a little fragile, and the damage that can be caused by failing to note the difference between snack and smack, or clasps and crossbars.

‘I believe for everyone who goes astray, someone will come and show the way…’  requires listening, sensitivity, presence and paying attention to small details…