Читать книгу Beyond the Horizon - Harry A. Renfree - Страница 82

March 16

Little things can be very important to our daily lives. Something happened during an American presidential debate that underscores that fact. On September 23, 1976, U.S. presidential candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were debating, each vying for the support of millions of listeners over the NBC network. Suddenly, as the broadcast got underway, there was almost deafening silence. For twenty–seven minutes, nothing was heard from the two candidates. What would cause a monumental break at such a historic juncture?

We were living in Calgary at the time, and the director of religious programming for NBC and her film crew were in Canada. They had come to Calgary to do a broadcast tape of an institution with which I was involved. I asked the director if she knew what had happened that night. “Yes,” she said, “there was a short circuit in a tiny capacitor—a $1 part about the size of a cigarette filter– which knocked out the only amplifier . . . and there wasn’t a backup nearby.”

You can draw all sorts of lessons from that one . . . how the world’s most important leaders are powerless under some circumstances . . . how important backups are . . . how some people fail to carry out their responsibilities ... how we all make mistakes . . . and so on.

I’d like to point out the importance of little things . . . just like that tiny capacitor.

For example, a little faith. Talking about that, Jesus put it this way: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to the mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move” (Matthew 17:20b). And it need not be a physical mountain. It may be a mountain of fear . . . a mountain of despair . . . a mountain of doubt. But a tiny bit of faith is needed to make the connection. That’s your part. The rest of the miracle is up to our Heavenly Father.