I don’t know whether you love the sport of football—American football, that is—or despise it. But surely you can’t help but appreciate the athleticism it requires to participate in such a hard-driving competition in which every play demands full force, full speed, full power. Every play involves coming into physical contact with other players who are also giving it their all. Few sports demand more of a man than football, and few men emerge unscathed at the end of their 60 minutes of play.
It would be a poor football player who paused the game every time he suffered the least hit, the least bruise, the least bump or scratch. It would be a player with a short career who reacted with outrage every time he was hit, blocked, or thrown to the ground. To play the game is to accept the consequences that come with it, and to play the game well is to accept them as inevitable.
I wonder if you are like me in that, as you look back on your life, you realize that most of the circumstances that have troubled you, most of the annoyances and disgruntlements, were produced by circumstances that were hardly worth noticing. In retrospect, most of the situations that stirred you to anger, kept you tossing and turning at night, or caused you to lash out in retaliation, were minor rather than major, little peeves and provocations more than grave injustices.
If so, I trust you’ve come to realize that if you want to be happy in life, you cannot get hung up on trifles. If you want to live with joy, you cannot linger on the minor wrongs that have been done to you or consider the fine details of the treatment you’ve received from others.
Yet the fact is, there are many people, many of them Christians, who spend far too much of their time thinking about how other people have treated them. There are many people who expend their lives not looking for what is true, beautiful, and worthy of praise, but searching instead for slights, offenses, and niggling irritations.
Who cares whether your own Mordecai bows low before you or remains upright? Does it matter whether you are given every accolade you deserve?
Haman’s life went off the rails—and to the scaffold—when he allowed a petty matter to become his obsession (see Esther 3). Are you really that much better? Who cares whether your own Mordecai bows low before you or remains upright? Does it matter whether you are given every accolade you deserve—or think you deserve? Does it matter if you receive every mark of honor your position usually demands? Does it matter if someone disses you, speaks ill of you, or assumes the worst of you? The lumberjack who stops his work to pick every little sliver out of his hand and apply a bandage to every little scratch on his face will never clear the forest. And neither will the Christian do much in the world or accomplish much for the church if he cannot see past petty annoyances, ignore minor insults, and overlook a good many offenses.
So do not be overly particular when it comes to the way others treat you. Do not demand your rights. Do not get hung up on what is of little consequence. To the contrary, be like Christ who “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself…” Humble yourself before God, humble yourself before others, and don’t let your joy be interrupted, diminished, or destroyed by what is petty, by what is minor, by what really doesn’t matter. Your life will be better for it.
Inspired by the sermons of De Witt Talmage
