Martha Olawale

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23

My daughter told me a story someone shared with them at church to reinforce the importance of minding little things before they become big things. She said it started with her going to her friend’s house for a sleepover. During the sleepover, they had fun playing with glitters. However, they couldn’t have imagined that such innocence could result in an adverse event her family did not plan for.

When she got back home, she noticed her eye was swollen but little did she know that the pleasure and beauty of the glitters they played with at her friend’s house would send her on a long road of recovery. When the swelling didn’t get any better, the parents took her to the hospital and later learned that a speck of glitter had traveled behind her eye and was moving towards her brain. By this time, it was beyond reach, and she had to go through surgery to get the tiny alien in her head out before it got to her brain.

In a world where information is everywhere, it is important for us to sharpen our spiritual sifting skills to only allow things that honor God to penetrate our minds and keep out those that can hurt us. Different ideologies fight for our hearts’ approval, pulling us from side to side instead of standing firm on the single truth of God’s word.

Most people love glitters, I mean, I do. They are shiny and just beautiful to look at but who would have thought that something so pretty could almost damage a little girl’s brain. Out of the thousands of tiny glitters, she played with that night, one managed to escape to the most dangerous part of her body, causing a major problem and sending her family on a spiral ride.

Allowing a tiny, weightless, negligible glitter to travel in the wrong direction of our mind can render us confused and helpless. Just like a beautiful handful of glitters, it’s so easy for us to be swayed by the innocence of little things that can have a lasting effect on our core values as followers of Christ. Little things that make us hide behind the notion of “it doesn’t matter” until it does matters. Yes, we are surrounded by so many thorns prickling our delicate souls, but if we follow the course charted by Jesus, we will avoid being bruised.