When a Small Thing Becomes Large…
There is something to be said for making sure that you are on the right track…
In fact, Paul said as much to Timothy (and Timothy is actually named as an apostle in 1 Thessalonians!) Apostle Paul said to Apostle Timothy:
“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the Word of truth…”
2 Timothy 2:15 NASB
Be diligent to get your facts straight. Make sure you don’t get sloppy when you are studying and sharing the Word of Christ! And this was said by a seasoned leader speaking to another seasoned leader!
How important is “getting it right?” Let’s illustrate this with a bit of cold war history from the last century:
Go back with me in time when the Cold War was still “very cold”--and this event almost heated things up out of normal range. The USSR and the US were vying with each other for the advance of their worldviews, and the world was divided between allegiances of nations behind either one of these two great powers…
The following incident didn’t help things at all.
On October 31, 1983 a Korean airline flight left Anchorage Alaska on a routine, direct flight to Seoul, South Korea. Unknown to the crew, the computer engaging the flight navigation system locked in a 1.5 degree navigation error.
Now 1.5 degrees was a very small routing error—and easily correctable, especially if it was noticed quickly. Trouble was that no one would have noticed this, as the error was within the ordinary margin of the flight path of the plane on its routine runs. A hundred miles out no one noticed the error either. Then as the plane got past the Aleutian Islands and out over the Pacific Ocean the routing error became increasingly large. The trouble, though, was that the geographic markers in view of those on that flight were exactly the same as they would have been had the flight been on precisely the right course in the first place. The pilots looking down would have seen either cloud cover or ocean for almost the entire duration of the trip.
American water, Korean and Japanese water, and Soviet water—well, none of that water was "spoke with a different accent"—it all looked like water.
Eventually the 747 flew out over Soviet air space. Fighter jets from the USSR received an invader signal, immediately intercepted the airliner—and in the toxic atmosphere of all the "world-dominating-trouble" from that era, the Soviets shot the Korean passenger plane right out of the sky.
The fighter pilots claimed that it was a spy plane. The Koreans named that it was a passenger plane clearly marked as such…
And the world grieved.
A small error, of 1.5 degrees—well that tiny error led to the unnecessary deaths of 269 people over Soviet airspace above the Sea of Japan. Who would have thought that a routing error as tiny as that could have killed people and led to an international incident?
Sometimes small beginnings produce large endings…
A small routing error in a flight path can lead to significant trouble.
A small compromise in our faith walk can have the same results…
Take a mixed decision, and no one notices at first. The path seems ordinary and clear… but as we continue to walk in our faith, without regular course corrections along the way, we discover that we are not as we should be…
If Timothy the apostle needed to work hard at what he was teaching, how much more do we need to do the same? And in our case, we have better access to the things that will help us grow… We have all the writings of the apostle Paul, and four gospels that teach us about the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus our Lord.
The command to us today is the same as the command to Apostle Timothy—we need to be diligent, to keep ourselves focused on walking that path that our Lord has set before us. The Old King James says it this way:
Study to show yourself approved to God, as a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth…
Carve out time to do just that!
Put it into your planner to "study" the Word, to be "diligent" in your godly walk—and keep that walk “on course.”
© David Chotka 2020
