Out of Small Things

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” I thought about this quote in connection with Elder Dunn’s recent conference talk on being one percent better and making small improvements consistently over time. After suggesting this approach to bettering ourselves he said, “Will little adjustments work that ‘mighty change’ that you desire? Properly implemented, I’m 99 percent certain they will! But the one caveat with this approach is that for small gains to aggregate, there must be a consistent, day-in and day-out effort. And although we won’t likely be perfect, we must be determined to mirror our persistence with patience. Do that, and the sweet rewards of increased righteousness will bring you the joy and peace you seek.” He then quoted Elder Bednar who taught, “Small, steady, incremental spiritual improvements are the steps the Lord would have us take. Preparing to walk guiltless before God is one of the primary purposes of mortality and the pursuit of a lifetime; it does not result from sporadic spurts of intense spiritual activity.” As we consistently make small efforts of spiritual improvement, we will turn those to actions and then actions to habits, and we will find those habits reap a character more like Savior and ultimately lead us back to Him. Alma put it this way in his famous teaching to his son Helaman: “By small and simple things are great things brought to pass” (Alma 37:6). We can indeed accomplish great things by doing the small things day-in and day-out.

                This reminds me of a story President Hinckley once told. He recounted, “Many years ago I worked in the head office of one of our railroads. One day I received a telephone call from my counterpart in Newark, New Jersey, who said that a passenger train had arrived without its baggage car. The patrons were angry. We discovered that the train had been properly made up in Oakland, California, and properly delivered to St. Louis, from which station it was to be carried to its destination on the east coast. But in the St. Louis yards, a thoughtless switchman had moved a piece of steel just three inches. That piece of steel was a switch point, and the car that should have been in Newark, New Jersey, was in New Orleans, Louisiana, thirteen hundred miles away.” His point was that we must avoid those small choices which will put us on the wrong course and take us places far from where we intended to go. But we can also apply it in the other sense: if we will make those small righteous choices we should and stick to them through the long haul, turning them into habits and ultimately into our way of life, it will make all the difference in where we end up. I love the way the Lord put it in our dispensation: “All things must come to pass in their time. Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:32-33). As we develop the habit of doing the “small things” that draw us nearer to Him, and weary not in continuing them day after day, we will indeed find in the end that we have done something great as we become more like the Savior. As President Oaks cited in a talk on steadily living the gospel, what we need “is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”  He added, “Some people live the gospel with ‘short, frenzied outbursts of emotion,’ followed by long periods of lapse or by performance that is intermittent or sputtering. What we need in living the gospel is ‘the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.’” As we seek for that steady dedication in all aspects of living the gospel, we will one day find the truth of Alma’s words: “And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst” (Alma 32:42).