Little Things

I've had a rotten cold for the last few days. It came out of nowhere; I went to bed feeling fine then woke in the night thinking, "My throat is on fire!" The rest, as they say, is history.
Everyone knows these things are caused by viruses, and a biochemist friend of mine told me a few things about them. Apparently a virus is a fragment of DNA that can infiltrate the resident DNA in a cell, effectively hijacking it to perform its own evil will. I often ask my friend if he's found a cure yet for the common cold but he replies that it's not that easy. Even though a virus is just a shred of DNA the part of that shred that causes us problems is smaller still and mutates constantly, making any classical drug obsolete the moment it is designed. The challenge is to find a way to target the stable 'carrier' part of the virus DNA - without killing everything else in the process.
It's sobering to think that a six-foot-one 13 stone alpha-male in superb physical condition (okay, that last part might be a slight exaggeration) can be brought low by a foe so small you'd need an electron microscope to see it, but I can assure you it's true. So often it's the smallest things that cause our biggest problems. Thoughtless words and actions can be the wedge that splinters a marriage. Just a little compromise with sin can explode to destroy your credibility and wreck your destiny. And how many times has spiritual laziness and indifference left me wondering what happened to the presence of God?
There is an old proverb in Yorkshire which says, "Take care of the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves". Success as a Christian does not come by mission statements, strategic plans or great visionary intentions. It is achieved daily, amid the cut-and-thrust of life by a series of seemingly insignificant decisions to do the right thing.