Lifting up the Little

“For who has despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plumbline in the hand of Zerubbabel…”

Zechariah 4.10

I am thankful for another week of small (and not so small) things that God has brought into and through our lives this week. I’ll explain the horse photo in a little bit, but let me wind back the week first.

Voice from the past at University…

The extra teaching hours went well on Monday (I have three, 1-hour classes) but amazingly, the young man who oversees that program, is someone who assisted me in 2005-2006 when I taught at the University of New Brunswick. He was an exchange student then.

I hadn’t seen him since 2011 and had I not begun teaching for this other department, I could’ve gone the entire time without knowing that he was there. God gave me a wonderful little thing in meeting back up with Nicolas.

Through this contact with him, I also got to meet another lecturer who is here for the year, from Bedford, Nova Scotia (Yay… another Maritimer!).

Bank Call…

We got a surprise phone call from our local bank here in France this week. Someone had made a direct deposit to our account that was an abnormal transaction for our account history… they called to know if it was something we were expecting or not (Banks actually have VERY tight controls here… moreso than in Canada).

In any case, someone we know had asked for our information, indicating that they wanted to send us “a little something.” It just turned out to be a bigger “little something” than we expected.

The Lord is our provider… but like with all missionaries, he uses human hands to meet the need and for that we are grateful!

Conversations

It’s funny what can start a conversation or open a door to someone new.

This week while waiting for the boys after school one day, one of the supervisors came over to ask me about Pollux. She had seen him with us a number of times and had been dying to get the chance to meet / pet him.

In fact… one other time it took her a little while to say hello because she didn’t recognize, at first, that we were the people that usually came with “the fluffy dog.”

She was very personable and very glad to chat… and all because of one little fluffy dog.

Translation

Liz has been doing a little bit of translation work this past week.

The King’s Translators (based in Quebec & headed up by Metro Missionary Liane Grant) is currently translating this book and Liz was doing some editing/ translating for it.

Liz’s university studies were in the fields of translation, so she is glad to sink her teeth back into some.

The Horse…

So what of the horse starting off todays post? It was another little thing this week.

Not far from home is an old railway line, the tracks of which have long been removed. This partially lamp-lit, asphalt pathway runs for kilometers and though we’ve biked it often enough, it’s also a great place to walk Pollux.

Those walks have provided me with many a sanity break when the seeming impossibility of what we’re doing has desired to creep into and dominate my mind.

When the weather is rainy, it’s ideal because there are few people who venture out.

When it’s fine, it’s also ideal, because the sunshine lifts my spirits, and brings out more people to interact with.

This week though, two horses were further up the field and this one came right down to the fence to say hello. It’s just a small thing, I know, but little things can be like the Lord looking at us and smiling.

Rarely can we see the big picture, and when we can’t… he gives us little pieces of the big picture to link together. The more we spend time linking the pieces, the more we see the big picture. That’s likely why Zechariah warns against despising the little things… because we desperately need the little things: they’re the building blocks that help us to see & understand the big things.

The Book

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d begun writing an eBook on visiting Paris (to be sold via the Amazon Kindle Bookstore).

It’s up to almost 90 pages at this point and I settled on a cover thanks to the helpful comments that many of you made via the blog, via Facebook and via Instagram.

Get the book Free!

The book is not launched yet, but when I do launch it, there will be a 5-day free promotion to initially get it into as many hands as possible.

Keep watching the blog and Instagram for details as the launch approaches (we’re still a couple of weeks away).