What We Do Matters, Even the Little Details
Ray and I were 25 and 23 when we moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in the summer of 1977 as a very green young campus minister and wife. Our first home was owned by the University Christian Student Center, whose administrators kindly allowed us to redecorate. I wanted to show you a photo of the dining room, but I couldn’t find one easily. This photo of our firstborn standing in the washing machine (I was young and foolish! I’m glad he didn’t push a button!) in the kitchen a couple of years later shows the same Early American wallpaper I chose for both rooms.
I have many times remembered a thought I had while painting the door facing that led from the dining room into the kitchen. While perched high on a stool or a ladder, I pondered whether it mattered if I painted the very top since no one would ever see it. I realized then that God could see it. The experience was a lesson for me: Details matter.
We don’t need to be compulsive or ridiculous, but what we do matters, even the little details.
Ray and I drove to West Tennessee on Saturday to visit our daughter and her family. When Ray’s phone alerted us that it was time to stop for the hourly break a doctor ordered, we came upon an Interstate truck parking lot. The environment was dismal. Parked trucks were scattered about the lot and so was litter. The one bright spot was that a trucker asked Ray to hold down a strap while he made some of his cargo more secure. He told Ray that he was traveling from Georgia to Arizona to deliver hot tubs to the Arizona Cardinals pro football team. You see some very interesting cargo when you are on the road as much as we are.
The litter saddened me. I am sorry that the people who use that parking lot don’t have enough respect for each other and for themselves to keep it tidy. To me, that matters.
Looking for photos of litter at the Library of Congress was rather fascinating. My search led me to dozens of sad photos of soldiers carrying the wounded on litters and to hopeful photos of soldiers practicing how to use litters. By contrast, I found several photos of litters of baby pigs and their mamas. I also found some photos of the kinds of litter I was actually looking for.
Littered Floor of the Stock Exchange after a Market Session,
New York City, New York. Early 20th Century.
Courtesy Library of Congress.
Men Sweeping Up the Floor of the Stock Exchange, 1908.
Courtesy Library of Congress.
Wire Room of the New York Times, September 1942.
Library of Congress description: All incoming dispatches are mimeographed, then passed through slot into newsroom for copy reading and editing. They have to be mimeographed so fast to meet the deadline that many copies fly out of the machine onto the littered floor.
Marjory Collins, Photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Library of Congress description: Large trashcan with sign that reads “Join the big sweep” and “You New Yorkers missed the baskets with 137 tons of trash every day. Keep N. Y. clean. Use litter baskets,” April 1957.
Angelo Rizzuto, Photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Beach litter rule sign, Wildwood, New Jersey, 1978
John Margolies, Photographer. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Homeschooling mamas have daily opportunities to train their children in the little things and the big things that matter.
Whatever you do in word or deed,
do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
Colossians 3:17