If you were in charge of recruiting people for a job, what would you look for? Skill, dedication, punctuality, reliability, patience, kindness, and consistency? Jesus said, ‘Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much’ (Luke 16:10 NIV). Life is mostly made up of little things, so if someone is unfaithful in little things, they’ll probably be unfaithful in most of life. We might have a ‘guilt pile’ – a stack of tasks and items that we keep meaning to sort out, but haven’t got round to yet. Faithfulness includes how we handle it. It might not matter much to us that someone has sent a message that we’ve read and not replied to yet, but that person might be waiting for an answer. Their peace of mind might be counting on it. So how do you manage the little things in life? Jesus said, ‘If you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?’ (v.12 NIV). Imagine you owned the university you attend, or the company you work for, or the supermarket you shop at. Would your respect for the resources and objects there change at all? Would you treat things better? How we handle things that aren’t ours is a test of faithfulness to God. Faithfulness is important in all areas of life. God says we’ll be rewarded for our faithfulness, so we need to do our best wherever we are and whatever we’re doing. ‘Work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters’ (Colossians 3:23 NIV). As followers of Jesus, we should have reputations for being the most dependable, reliable, and trustworthy people – because we know who our true boss is!
