PATD: Pay Attention to Details!
I used to know a baseball coach who was always telling his team, “PATD” or Pay Attention to Details. His theory was that if you took care of the little things, the big things would take care of themselves.
There is a lot of wisdom in that thinking. God cares about the smallest details of our lives, and wants us to care, too. Look at all the details that God hands down in Exodus regarding the building of the Temple! Nothing was left to chance.
God wants us to follow that path for our own lives. In Luke we read:
Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won’t be faithful in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. Luke 16:10
It is so easy to rationalize a small dishonesty, a “white lie.” But small lies grow into larger ones. It gets easier with subsequent events to shade the truth.
This is a hard concept for me. I have always been a “big picture” person, but that isn’t how we are to live. We have to take care of small things, little details, to complete our big puzzle of life. Some things in life seem so unimportant, yet those are things that God wants us to pay attention to, as well as the big things.
Matthew 10:30 says that God knows the number of hairs on our head… he is greatly concerned with each and every aspect of our lives. But we aren’t. We claim we are too tired to do this or that, it isn’t really important. But if it is all important to God, shouldn’t it be to us, as well?
Following details is all part of a pattern of faithfulness and obedience. If we are faithful to the little things, as we read in Luke, we will be faithful in all things.
Look at the picture at the top of this page. Look closely at the detail involved. The richness of the color. The fragile petals, all perfectly formed and placed together. This is God’s way of paying attention to details.
So be faithful and obedient to God… let’s pay attention to those little things that so often slip through the cracks, and allow God to use those “little details” to fulfill His promises… and let our lives blossom like roses!
Leave a Reply