The Little Things

I am beginning to catch on to what service is. It is no big hullabaloo. It may not even be noticed. It is some little act, perhaps repeated and repeated, and it’s done because there is an impulse to do it.

Heaven Admin gives so many behind-the-scenes offerings of service. He doesn’t call attention to anything he does. He just does it. He doesn’t say a word about it unless a word about it is necessary for some reason like letting us know that the forum might be down for a little while.

The way I see it, he just plugs along and sees little things he can do to make Heavenletters™ nicer for all of us. I don’t suppose he really even thinks about it. He sees something to do, and he goes ahead and does it. Of course, he does all the vast things too, but today I'm writing about the little things.

Yesterday, for the blog entry, The Plague of the Ants, not only did Heaven Admin, as always, put the images up, he also put a frame around the little ant pictures. He went that extra step. The images are much better now – just right -- with the box around them. I never thought about it, but Heaven Admin did. It occurred to him, and he did it. I know he would say it was nothing, or just a little thing, but that’s exactly what I’m talking about, the little things – they mean so much.

I suppose this is like a father who before he goes to bed sharpens his little boy’s ice skates or picks up his child’s toys or just looks in on his child as he sleeps and maybe pulls the covers up. Or like a teacher who writes GOOD on her students’ papers and keeps fixing all the spelling. Or like our UPS man here who always seems to go, not the extra mile, but the extra inch, just somehow making the world so much more cheerful without even thinking about it.

This is like the Heaven Archivist who does everything behind the scenes because her heart tells her to.

This is like the Heaven translators who, day after day, not only translate, but do a consummate job of translating. Crowds don’t line up to thank them, but that doesn’t matter to the translators. Translating and doing it right matters.

This is like the people who regularly post on the forum and make sure to respond to a new person who posts for the first time.

I could go on and on.

You don’t have to to be good at arithmetic to know that the little things add up to a lot.