Do Small, Hard Things

Over at The Rebelution they have an excellent guest post by Alex King. The Rebelution is an exciting site, becuase it challenges stereotypical and destructive ideas about what the teen years should be. This post, Hard Things Come in Small Packages, reminds us that to accomplish large and difficult goals, we must persevere through many small, hard things. Here is a section of the article:

"Without doing these small things, we can’t achieve those huge goals. Look at this line from the parable of the talents in Luke 19:17,

And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

This isn’t simply a kingdom principle that Christ is talking about; it’s also a logistical principle. Yes, for our own good, God will hold back the cities until we can handle the little. But we should also realize that if we didn’t do the little, then we’d never accomplish the cities anyway.

Doing hard things means being diligent in the small. Getting across an ocean means many strokes of rowing. Scoring a film means many mornings of getting up early. Changing the world means changing our everyday actions. These are the hard things that we need to be doing if we really want to make a difference - the small, seemingly unexciting tasks that we so often procrastinate on, or ignore altogether.

So when you run into something small and unexciting, and you feel like procrastinating or ignoring it, don’t! Get up that extra hour earlier to work on that project. Reply to that email that could wait, but shouldn’t. Write that blog post that you’re simply not in the mood for, but need to do. Change the way you behave around your family for the better. Do those little things that don’t seem important, exciting, or enjoyable at first – but that can get you to your goals.

We all want to accomplish Hard Things, but we often forget to get excited about small ones. If we can do the small things, then we’ll be on our way to the large ones, and ready when we get to them."

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