Is anything overwhelming you these days? 

Is there a dream or a goal or a hope or wish or prayer that looms before you and seems too big to accomplish? 

I’ll give you a moment to think about it.

Got it? 

Me too. A lot of them. 

In Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein wrote this amusing little poem with a heap or wit and truth:

“Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae

Who ate a monstrous whale?

She thought she could, 

She said she would,

So she started in right at the tail.

And everyone said, “You’re much too small,”

But that didn’t bother Melinda at all,

She just took little bites and she chewed very slow,

Just like a good girl should,

… and eighty-nine years later she ate that whale

Because she said she would.”

I think sometimes the hopes and dreams and goals in our minds feel a bit like eating a whale. 

And the trouble is, we kind of like it better when things are easy, right? We want the get-rich-quick-story. We want to be discovered. We want the overnight underdog-now-on-top thing.

Proverbs 13 speaks to this in an interesting way.;

“Wealth from get-rich-quick schemes quickly disappears;

  wealth from hard work grows over time.” {Prov. 13:11, NLT}

The Practical Bite-Sized Way 

A few years ago, we wanted to start reading aloud to our kids more, but weren’t sure exactly where that was going to fit into our sort-of-feeling-tight routine.

We decided to make use of those few minutes when we’d finished our dinner and the kids were still eating to read something aloud. Every once in a while, they’d be ready for bed ahead of schedule and we’d read then as well.

We started in January, and by May we’d read seven books (chapter books!) to our kiddos with time we didn’t realize we had — time that would otherwise been spent on a little of this and a little of that.

This one-bite-at-a-time principle doesn’t just apply to eating a whale. If you want a deeper walk with Jesus but don’t have an hour every morning, take the ten minutes you do have. Find an app to read the Bible to you while you drive to work, or set that alarm just a few minutes earlier and see what happens.

If you want to improve your relationship with your spouse or children, consider what you could do with ten minutes. Sitting on the floor for ten minutes to play with my four-year-old fills her cup big time. Taking ten minutes to talk over coffee before starting our work days is a life-giving practice between the hubs and me.

Andy Stanley said, “There is a cumulative value to investing small amounts of time in certain activities over a long period.”

Small bites.  

Baby steps.  

Big change. 

May you pause today to see the small steps that will help bring about the big change in this one precious life of yours, friend.