#SpreadTheGospel

“If you’re stuck in a space where nothing is urgent but everything needs doing, and the consequences of delay are yours alone to bear, then Repair of Small Objects may be just the spell that frees you from your doom spiral.” Karla L. Miller, Minor Mendings

The article from which I drew this quote is called, Minor Mendings, and I liked how the title rolls off the tongue with ease and makes one sound sophisticated.

Inasmuch as I would have loved the quote to be about something deeply philosophical, I was quite dismayed when I did my research and discovered that it is talking about home repairs in the literal sense. Pffft!

The Bible is laden top-tier quotes and I wonder what made me trudge the Minor Mendings path. I suspect it is the ease with which ‘minor mendings’ rolls off the tongue and makes one sound sophisticated. Besides that, the article was an underwhelming read on how best get to house chores and repairs done.

Having given it some thought, I think I understand why that quote refused to leave me alone even after I found out it was only about broken chairs and loose door handles. There is something about a task that is not urgent yet somehow never stops needing to be done that every single one of us recognises immediately, whether we are talking about a wobbly table or the parts of our lives we keep meaning to get around to. Nobody sends you a deadline for mending your ways. Nobody schedules a reminder for the apology you have been owing someone since March or the quiet time with God that keeps getting pushed to tomorrow because today was simply too full (especially THIS!). The bill for delay does not arrive with a due date attached and that is precisely what makes it so easy to ignore.

I picture Nehemiah in front of a long-dilapidated wall that everyone had accepted as it was. No one in Jerusalem suddenly decided to address the issue because the threat of an open city isn’t as obvious as a fire. Nobody in Jerusalem woke up one morning and declared an emergency over those walls, because the danger of an unguarded city does not announce itself the way a fire does. It simply sits there for as long as you allow it to. Nehemiah wept over that wall, prayed over it and then did the work of rebuilding it stone by stone with people who had every excuse under the sun not to show up.

“So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.”

Nehemiah 4:6 KJV

I have come to believe that a mind to work is the actual miracle in that story, because the materials were there the whole time and the need was old news to everyone. What was missing was someone willing to treat the small mendings as urgent before they became a crisis.

That is the part I keep sitting with. We tend to reserve our urgency for the things that shout at us, the emergencies, the ultimatums, the situations that force our hand. Meanwhile the little foxes that spoil the vines, as Solomon calls them, are allowed to wander freely through the vineyard precisely because they are little.

“Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.”

Song of Solomon 2:15 KJV

It is the small unattended things that ruin what took years to grow. A vineyard is not usually destroyed in a single dramatic afternoon. It is nibbled away slowly by things nobody thought were worth the trouble of catching.

I will confess that I am writing this with my own pile of little foxes in full view. There are conversations I have been avoiding, a to-do list with items so old they have practically earned tenure. None of it is urgent in the way a burst pipe is urgent and that is exactly the trap, because urgency was never a fair measure of importance to begin with. The things that quietly shape who we become rarely come knocking with a siren.

Here is the good news buried underneath all of this.

“And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.” Isaiah 58:12 KJV

That is the promise given to the people who choose to do the work of restoration. God is not looking for people who wait for a crisis to force their obedience. He is looking for people willing to mend the small things while they are still small, while the wall is only cracked and not yet fallen, while the relationship is only strained and not yet severed, while the habit is only forming and not yet ruling.

When we have let things slide further than we would like to admit, further than a small mending can fix on its own, there is still this.

“Is any thing too hard for the LORD?”

Genesis 18:14 KJV

God asked Abraham that question over a promise that looked laughably impossible from where Sarah was standing, an old woman being told she would have a son, and He asks it of us over whatever we have let fall apart for far too long. That tells me the mendings we have neglected for years are not beyond His reach either. He is not intimidated by the size of the disrepair.

So here is my challenge to myself and to you, because I clearly need it as much as anyone. Pick one small thing today; send the message, submit that application, open the Bible even if it is only for five minutes. Fix the thing you have been stepping around in your house or in your heart for months. It will not feel urgent because it never has, but the consequences of leaving it will keep nudging you until you deal with them. Better a small mending done today than a collapsed wall to rebuild later.

Go on and mend something small today. 🙂

If you are not born again and would like to give your life to Christ, please repeat the prayer below out loud.

Dear Lord,

Thank You for dying on the cross for me. I believe in my heart that You died and rose again and I confess with my mouth that You are Lord and Saviour in my heart and in my life. I denounce my former ways and choose to be Your child. Thank You for setting me free. I am now born again.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen

You are now born again. Congratulations and welcome to the God-side of the family.

God loves you.😘

XO,

That Lady