Perpetual victories in small things

When feeling overwhelmed by my personal difficulties last week, I suddenly saw the importance of claiming and constantly thanking God for small victories, however seemingly insignificant or passing. That is, to thank God for small acts of kindness and gentleness, a smile, a personable exchange, for willingly stepping into the service of others and to openly receiving the service of others, for forgetting and losing yourself in little acts of love, whether with people you are close to, with those you have a professional relationship with, or with strangers. 

Then in the middle of this revelation I realized, too, that there was nothing hopeless or overwhelming about my personal difficulties at all, as these victories in small things added up to a lot and can be claimed forever in any situation, as each little victory is a ‘treasure stored in heaven’ (Mathew 6:19-21). That these little victories come from God and Christ and can be claimed by us, because they are laid out for us to choose and to accept, with a view to being liberated from our circumstances, derived from us embracing the biggest victory, being Christ’s over death in all its forms (Romans 8:31-39). 

I was then prompted to read some of Victor Frankl’s wonderful insights, who survived the Nazi holocaust, taken from his book Man’s Search for Meaning:

“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.” And then…

“We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”