Tag: tremendous trifles

What does “little things matter” mean? G.K. Chesterton famously said,

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

The renowned Georgian pedagogue Shalva Amonashvili counts his life in days, not in years. Born in 1931, he knows exactly how many days he has lived. He says when you count days, days become longer. Counting days helps you notice interesting things about your day — not the duration of time.

When you recognize God in little things, you realize there are no trifles. Everything is a tremendous trifle. If God is anywhere, he is everywhere. If we see him at least in some things, we will see him in all things. He is either everywhere or nowhere. If we don’t notice him in little things, we won’t notice him in big things.

Amonashvili plays a game with his students — every time he runs into someone in the corridors of his school, he asks them, “What happened?” The student answers. Fifteen minutes later, he asks them again, “What happened?” The student shrugs his shoulders, “Didn’t you ask me already? What could happen in 15 minutes?”

Amonashvili says, “Something must have happened. You don’t think God was on vacation these 15 minutes, do you? He must have been creating.”

God is in the business of creating tremendous trifles all the time. The more we zoom in the more we see. The word “happen” comes from Middle English happenen, derived from Old Norse “happa”, which means “fortune.” Every time something happens, we are fortunate. It’s a chance to see big things in trifles.

When my friend calls me from Russia to catch up, sometimes it’s hard to start a conversation from scratch. So, I scratch my head, “What has happened since our last talk? Hmm… not much.” But then I tell him little things like the weather, and what I had for breakfast that morning. Suddenly, I see a hummingbird hovering over my wife’s flowers. How fortunate!

The hummingbird reminds me of something I had read about birds recently. Our conversation opens up into something tremendous. There’s a fortune lurking behind every trifle.

“Teach us to count our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

G.K. Chesterton opens his Tremendous Trifles with a story of two little boys, Paul and Peter who met a fairy. Paul asked to be turned into a giant so he might stride across continents to Niagara and the Himalayas in an afternoon dinner stroll.

Voila! He was turned into a giant. He stood up and strolled to the Himalayas, but… “he found they were quite small and silly-looking.” Then, he strolled to Niagara, and…

“…he found Niagara it was no bigger than the tap turned on in the bathroom. He wandered round the world for several minutes trying to find something really large and finding everything small, till in sheer boredom he lay down on four or five prairies and fell asleep.”

Peter made the opposite request. He wished to become a pigmy about half an inch high and immediately became one. His small garden suddenly transformed into a huge plain covered with a tall green jungle. He saw gigantic trees in the distance, and even a mountain — a whole wide world full of wonders. He smiled, rose to his feet, and…

“…set out on his adventures across that coloured plain; and he has not come to the end of it yet.”