Council Grove Christian Church

1/15/26
Servants of God,
 
“The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences.”
-Dr. Samuel Johnson
 
One of the greatest men of the eighteenth century (there were plenty of them) was Samuel Johnson. Johnson singlehandedly created the first true dictionary of the English language in 1755. Singlehandedly, he completed the task in nine years. To put it into perspective, the same task in French took multiple people a century. He was by all reports a hulk of a man who was nearly blind and extremely excentric. He was a Christian whose life was shaped by a deep and abiding faith. James Boswell, Johnson’s biographer, spent decades with Johnson and largely copied down the things Johnson said then afterward told the story of the great man’s life.
The above quotation is a famous one. It captures the truth that most of life is to be found in the ordinary, daily experiences of life. It is not the great and glorious “bucket list” events that make life. Those can be wonderful, but they are not the real stuff of life. What we do and experience in the day-to-day ordinary events make up life. How we live in those mundane moments will determine our character and the legacy we leave.
We ought to ask ourselves each day, how am I doing in the smallest issues of life? Jesus taught that to be faithful in little is the key to being faithful in much (Luke 16). Our lives are lived in small increments. If we are righteous in each little moment, the trajectory of our life will be toward the glory of God. If we think we can be wicked in the smallest of things without it impacting the general direction of life, we fool ourselves. 
How did we get to the point where criminals who have entered our nation illegally are held up as icons of virtue while police officers are called nazis and monsters? How did we get to the point where politicians casually use the most vulgar and disrespectful language in public? How did we get to the point where children do not obey their parents and parents do not value children as precious creatures made in the image of God? What got us to the place where the average American no longer trusts the major institutions of the nation?
We know, of course. We got here one little thing at a time; one little thing after the other. Little by little civility melted away. Little by little honesty became optional. Little by little integrity became less important.
The life of the righteous person unfolds the way the sunlight bathes the earth. It begins with the first rays of light but grows brighter and brighter as it becomes mature. This is the way life works. It is made up of small decisions, thoughts and actions, but as it continues the character of the life becomes clearly discernable. Nations have a life span too. Ours started out with the awareness that liberty and justice were essential to good government. The founders spoke of the necessity for virtue and warned that the loss of virtue would eventually lead to the loss of liberty.
What can you and I do for our nation? We can tell the truth about God and humanity in the smallest of things and continue to do so as our opportunities increase in frequency and magnitude. We can humbly and sincerely consider others more significant than ourselves. “You first” is a small thing. Thank you, please, Excuse me etc. are powerful small acts of respect. We can all start with the smallest of things. If we would do that, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live meaningful and God-glorifying lives that bring blessing and hope to others.
A good question for Christians to ask as we view the mess in Minnesota is: What exactly is happening? We know for certain that the daycare fraud has stolen millions of tax dollars that have been rerouted to Somalia and other places. That is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg of fraud and illegality. When you look at the chaos on the streets of Minneapolis, you see something very much like what Communists have done on streets around the world. Using the language of liberation and protecting “the people” those who practice the spirit of Bolshevism repeat the same angry dramatics. It is always a promise to bring in utopia. It always yields a loss of freedom with power and money flowing into the hands of a select few. Everyone will be equal morphs into, but some are more equal than others. Suffering and death follow.
How did we get here? One little lie at a time. One little justification of envy. One little failure to teach history. One little refusal to repent. One little failure to receive the revelation of truth from God Almighty. One rejection of Jesus. The church of Jesus holds the key to saving our nation. Will we go along to get along? Or will we enter the harvest with the truth of the gospel?
Blessings,
Pastor John
Coram Deo