“Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.” (Alma 37:6). Many of us are tempted by the idea of designing some grand system that can remove all of the uncertainty and unfairness from our own individual lives and perhaps from the world as a whole. If we can just map out all of the variables and position things just so, we can take all of the guesswork out of doing the right thing and optimize our journey through life. But the Lord doesn’t change the world through complex systems but by small and simple things. It is those things, those tiny details in our lives that we try to remove at our peril. We may wish this or that little challenge or obstacle could magically disappear but we don’t know yet what that small and simple thing might do for us in the long run. We learn and grow by embracing the minutiae and not running away from the specific and unique situations that arise each and every day. When we seize hold of the small and simple things, we no longer fail to see the trees for the forest, as it were. We don’t assume that because we’ve dealt with a particular circumstance a hundred times that we know exactly how to handle this small and simple thing right here and right now, regardless of how similar to past experiences it may at first appear. I know that Christ would rather that we feed His small and simple and individual sheep than feed His large and impersonal and undifferentiated flock.
