A Silvery airplane stood ready for flight. Each smallest bit of equipment, each bolt and instrument, had been carefully inspected and tested before the great ship was allowed to soar aloft. Such little things, bolts! Springs in a watch, rivets in the steel framework of a mighty bridge or a giant building—such little things, but so vitally important.
Little things in one's thinking are equally important. A little hate differs only in quantity from hate itself; a little unselfed love affords a glimpse of the very nature and character of divine Love, God. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 123), "Seeing that we have to attain to the ministry of righteousness in all things, we must not overlook small things in goodness or in badness, for 'trifles make perfection,' and 'the little foxes ... spoil the vines.'"
What are the little foxes that spoil the vines of happiness and success? They are the little thoughts and acts of selfishness, self-pity, self-condemnation, and self-justification; the little worries, anxieties, and fears; the unkind criticism, spoken or unspoken; the friction and tension, the jealousies and rivalries of human relationships.
