“Then he added, “Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given—and you will receive even more.”

One of my favorite and oft-quoted here blogger, Seth Godin, wrote this about how things can change.  He titled his post, “Erosion””

“The Grand Canyon wasn’t created by an earthquake.

While it’s tempting to imagine that the world changes via sudden shocks, that our culture is shifted by dramatic changes in leadership, that grand gestures make all the difference…

It turns out that our daily practice, the piling up of regular actions, the cultural practices and biases that we each choose—that’s what makes change happen.

False promises and urgent reactions are a trap and a sideshow.”

These are wise words from Seth.  We’ve all seen it in our companies when we find ourselves saying, “It just snuck up on us.”  The truth is that few problems ever really sneak up on us.  They get there usually because we either ignore or deny their presence.  We tend to like to treat problems like they are wine, hoping that they will only get better with time.  But, problems are not like wine, they are like milk and once they begin to turn they go bad really fast. And so, we can learn that when the problems do arise, that we have to pay attention, otherwise we just let the erosion continue to occur.

I think Jesus knew a lot about the little things in life, which is why He would take special effort and care to point out the mundane and every day activities to illustrate and magnify His teachings.  We can learn from not only His actual teaching but also from Him that this attention to the small things are a way to not allow our own slow erosion to occur.  I have had enough business and life experience to know that the person who commits fraud, steals, backstabs, fabricates, or causes big problems, isn’t doing any of this for the first time.  By the time things come to light, these people have become practiced over long spans of time and perfected the small cheating, pilfering, gossiping, degrading, etc.  And so it is important that we watch over the little areas of our life that if left unattended or worse, ignored or denied, can overtake us with an erosion of our character and soul.

Reference: Mark 4:24 (New Living Translation)