Small things keep life meaningful
By Mike Haynes
A long time
ago, someone asked me, “What’s more important to you: the big events in life or
the small, everyday things?”
I had
trouble answering, because it seemed about 50-50, but I finally said the big
events – such as my wedding or a vacation to another country. Later, I wished I
had said the small things, because I realized most of our lives are made up of
those, and most of our human relationships fully develop in the way we treat
each other day in and day out.
We can’t
deny, though, that momentous occasions sometimes define where we stand in life
– even if the event may be someone else’s in which we’re just participating.
Consider some chances I’ve had
lately to pause and think – and compare them to recent situations of your own.
Weddings
and funerals certainly can stir up the brain cells – or is it the heart
strings? Tonight, (July 20) niece Sheri Ann is getting married. Of course it’ll
be a huge event for her and her fiancé, Tyler, but it’s a milestone for my
parents because she’s their first granddaughter to get married. It’ll be in the
little Methodist church all my family grew up in, in the small town we still
call home, with my cousin the preacher officiating.
Weddings
remind us that new generations are coming up – that when we’re gone, life and
at least some traditions will continue.
Hospitals
also give us time to think. My mother, Joyce, has been in them twice lately
with health scares that jolted me into reminiscing about good times growing up
in the Texas Panhandle, about parents not missing one of their kids’ sporting
events, about a mother and her bridge club friends, about a dad playing golf
with his kids.
Then, a
week ago, Mom’s birthday brought much of the family to that small town for cake
and hamburgers. In a family that doesn’t say the “L word” much, I still saw
love in my 58-year-old brother explaining to his 83-year-old mother that he
thought she’d like the color of the outfit he and his wife were giving her.
Too often,
we have to remember someone when we’d rather be talking to him or her. That was
the case this month when disease took a young man from his wife and two boys. Even
for me, not a close friend but an acquaintance, the funeral had special
meaning. How can you not lament the loss of someone who was talented, vibrant
and whose death brought hundreds together to honor him? And ending it with a
string band playing “I’ll Fly Away”? Hard to beat.
School
reunions certainly stimulate the memory, and the one in my hometown this summer
was no exception. For many in the Panhandle, such events are community-wide
celebrations. Mine included quizzing an uncle about his upcoming surgery and
finding out that a schoolmate who played pro football roomed with a Heisman
Trophy winner.
Others’
occasions can bring our own lives into focus, from the Christian retreat that 16-year-old
niece Maria attended in June to friend Iris’s 90th birthday coming
up next week. I’ve been where Maria is, and I hope to reach the age Iris is
approaching. Their milestones touch me, too.
Big events
can be important, as can daily routines. Maybe the key to both is who you do them
with. According to Jesus, the two most significant things we can do are to love
God and to love people.
If you’ll
notice, all the occasions mentioned above involve people. And the more they
involve God, the more meaningful they are.
