The first week (actually a little longer than that) of my brother’s visit wasn’t spent on ministry opportunities. Instead, we focused on projects round the home, and spending time together.

Most of these projects were small things that weren’t hard to fix, but I didn’t have the time to deal with them since ministry kept me busy.

While doing those projects my brother Michel said something to me incredibly profound.

We were working on something that to be honest, wasn’t that important. I was interested in moving on to more important projects.

That’s when he turned to me and said “John, we can ignore the problem, or fix the problem.”

In that moment I relied how I’d fallen into the trap of ignoring the smaller projects instead of fixing them (since there wasn’t time).

and those smaller projects had piled up.

for instance, there were some older chairs that had begun to show wear. They were easily fixed by sanding and putting on some new wood finish. The thing is I KNEW that small project needed to be done, but I kept putting it off.

In the same way it’s incredibly easy for us to ignore the smaller projects or problems of life saying, “I’ll fix that soon.”

Then we wake up one day surrounded by bigger problems demanding our attention

It is much better to take the time to deal with the smaller problems or projects of life. The extra time and energy put into this will be well worth it.

It is easy to ignore problems instead of fixing them.

So, I have to remind myself, the small problem ignored today becomes a massive problem tomorrow.