ONE OF Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez’s favourite sayings, especially when a vital game with Chelsea is on the horizon, is how winning football matches is ‘all about the small details’.
It’s a twist on an age-old adage which has spawned financial variants such as ‘take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves’ and, erm, well, that’s it actually, but you get the point.
This being a God-themed blog, you would expect me to make some kind of link between Senõr Benitez and the creator of heaven and earth, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Non-believers get my goat sometimes by insisting that there simply cannot be a God because ‘bad things happen’, failing monumentally to recognise that millions upon millions of miraculous and wonderful things happen too. It’s just that we don’t notice them.
But it strikes me that as Christians we are just as capable of missing out on the bigger picture through a willingness to ignore ‘the small details’.
All this occurred to me as I trooped through the Ikea car park last night laden with furniture.
When my wife Julie and I got married after 14 months of long-distance joy and agony (she lived in Chelmsford and I lived in a city centre bachelor pad on Pall Mall), we relished the joys of shopping together in Asda and the nights in front of the telly watching Coronation Street as much as we did any big night out.
Now, after (almost) three years of wedded bliss it is easy to forget how excited we were at simply being able to be together.
I know all that might sound nauseous. And I know that wanting to jump up and down and praise God for finding us a garden set we could afford and a babysitter to look after the children while we bought it may sound ludicrous.
But Benitez was right, it is all about the details, and God needs to be thanked for that as much as anything.
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Anonymous wrote...
That still doesn't explain how a god-faring, honest, upright person can lead his whole life by God's will, and then suffer the torment, anguish, agony of losing a son/daughter to an unexplainable/ crime/ shock event.
Where's the reason in that? There is none.
And just because you can appreciate nights in by the fire, or buying your veg from the supermarket together, that's a sign that you weren't spending regular time together, so when you did, it became precious.
Nothing to do with proof of a God.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 8, 2007 9:11 AM