Sales of Hornby products have done well during the pandemic. We have turned with gusto to model railways and Scalextric racers. Whether things will continue like this when lockdown is over we have yet to see. But the pandemic, like war, has accelerated trends already in evidence. And fascination with miniatures is something we all know about. We like model villages. We like Action Man (or we did). We like small-scale replicas – dolls’ houses, sail-boats, Dinky vehicles, elephants. Auctions and car-boot sales make much of such things.
Few of us, I suppose, turn immediately to Zechariah for a comment on this. But in 4.10 Zechariah asks the question: ‘Who hath despised the day of small things?’ If we know nothing else from Zechariah, this is probably lodged in our memory bank like the Treaty of San Stephano from the days when we wandered through the backwaters of European history.
This is hardly the place to explore the book called Zechariah. If we are prepared to plunge into complicated issues, we can look into the identity of Zerubabbel, one of the characters in the document. But we probably have more pressing matters to attend to. What we can do is wrestle with Zechariah’s question. Or perhaps better, rephrase it so that it reads ‘What is the difference between trivialities and matters of consequence? We all remember that anonymous poem ‘For want of a nail … the battle was lost.’ Some small things are hugely significant; others are nor worth a moment’s thought. It is important to know the difference.
If we let trivialities become an obsession, we need to review our priorities. It is all very well saying that God notices the fall of a sparrow (Matthew 10.29); that is part of a cosmos subject to the rule of law, a law originating with a Maker. But as the Gospel-writer points out, it is also true that we are of more value than many sparrows. At some stage, early or late, we have to come to a view on this. Faith and common sense help us on our way.
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