In another post, I wrote about the compound effect in writing. If you write little notes constantly, they add up. If you are taking those little notes in a “smart” way, it’s fairly easy to put them together intelligently. (The book How to Take Smart Notes lays out the method.)
I’ve been thinking about the compound effect in the spiritual life, because I’m working through Josemaría’s The Way, and I’m in the section called Little Things.
Here’s one passage where he reflects on the ultimate effect of little things being worked on continuously:
“Have you seen how that imposing building was built? One brick upon another. Thousands. But, one by one. And bags of cement, one by one. And blocks of stone, each of them insignificant compared with the massive whole. And beams of steel. And men working, the same hours, day after day… Have you seen how that imposing building was built?… By dint of little things!”
The Way, 823.
This idea popped up again in my morning reading, when Jacques Philippe discussed the “spiritual law” that says your fidelity to grace in the “little” things will yield grace for you in “more important” things:
“Now, every time we respond faithfully to a motion of the Spirit, out of a desire to be docile to what God expects of us, even if it’s something almost insignificant in itself, that faithfulness draws grace and strength down on us. That strength can then be applied to other areas and may make us capable of one day practicing the commandments that up until then we had not been capable of fulfilling entirely.
This could be seen as one application of the promise made by Jesus in the Gospel: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much.” Matt. 25:21.
One can deduce a fundamental “spiritual law” from it: We will obtain the grace to be faithful in the important things that at present we find impossible, by dint of being faithful in the little things within our grasp, especially when those little things are the ones that the Holy Spirit asks of us by calling to our hearts with his inspirations.”
From In the School of the Holy Spirit, p. 20-21.