It’s the Small Things

I recently read an article written by a person who had corresponded with a man in prison serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.  In his last letter, this man realized that he had just a few years to live and that he would never see the outside world again.  The letter went something like this:

“ I deserve to be here.  I have wasted my life.  When I think back on it, its not the big things that I think about, but the small things that I miss the most.”

“I miss the rain.  The feeling of it falling from the sky and down on my head. And the way rain smells as it falls in the trees.

I miss church choirs and church bells.  Sunday mornings.

I miss dragonflies over ponds.  And fish jumping.

I miss fried trout over a campfire.

I miss gardens and farms with fields that stretch as far as you can see.

I miss animals like dogs and hogs.  And birds.

I miss toast with homemade jam.

I miss picking berries on bushes and seeing a cornfield full and ripe with a small breeze blowing.

I miss coffee on the porch when it rains.

I miss people talking to you for no reason; people you can trust with what you say.

I miss waking up and hearing people you love talking in the kitchen.

All these things...that’s what heaven is.  All these things.  And that means that there are no small things, are there?  Nothing is little or insignificant.  Everything is huge and holy and so stuffed with miracles that the miracles leak out and give us hope for this world.  And maybe for ourselves.”

In the end, it is the small things that will save us.