Many years ago, when I was an ambitious young finance executive (yes, I did have a previous life), I remember attending a particular training session conducted by the HR Department which was designed to focus our minds on the finer detail of our roles. “Details are important,” we were told. Well, “Duh”, I thought at the time, “Everybody knows that!” But, before we could mentally tick that one off and move on to the next discussion topic, a video was played.
It was the story, as I recall, of a young and ambitious executive at a fine foods manufacturing company in England. He was tasked with quickly working out the transport logistics of a huge shipment to a large supermarket warehouse hub. This was the biggest sale to a retailer the young executive had ever pulled off. It was huge, and was bound to be a big feather in his career cap.
Well, he organised tray trucks (lorries, as I recall) and so on and got all the food loaded up and ready to go. He hired extra hands to make the shipment happen in record time. He had organised everything to within an inch of its life. Then the trucks rolled out of the depot and started down the freeway out of London to their destination.
The convoy of 23 trucks were halfway to their destination when a huge storm hit those open trucks. The deluge was massive and lasted 20 minutes – and this was in the days before plastic wrapping for truckloads of goods. Even the strong cardboard containers were quickly soaked, and the fine food ruined. On arrival at the warehousing hub, the manager refused to accept the damaged shipments. He turned the trucks around and sent them back. The manager told his chief who called the young executive and said, “Didn’t you check the weather forecast for today? We were due for heavy rains. You should have covered the loads with tarps. The shipment is ruined. The deal is off.” And he angrily hung up. The young executive was devastated.
In shock, he went and told his boss who was furious – hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock was lost. The boss fired the young executive on the spot. The video closed with a scene where the devastated young executive arrives home early from work. His wife was surprised to see him. He asked what she was reading to the children in the lounge room, and she said, “A poem about a captain in the army who had to get a crucial message across enemy territory to his general, who was facing certain defeat. The message was to sound a retreat and regroup with another general nearby. The message never got there … because of a single nail. The horse lost a shoe and stumbled, breaking its leg and killing the captain. It’s very sad. And all because of a nail. Let me read the story to you – it ends with a poem.”
This is the poem she read …
“For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
The video closes with the young executive looking into the camera ashen faced. “For the want of a nail” summed up his terrible day. For the want of a simple weather forecast – a small but crucial detail – all the promise of his career was lost in one morning. And it was devastating. I have never forgotten that video clip.
We can be so, so busy and focused on achievement, and the end result, ambition and the anticipation of success, to such an extent that we can overlook simple but crucial details. Some details are crucial. One crucial detail can make or break a career, a relationship or your finances.
I was chatting with a friend in my favourite coffee shop this week. She works in a welfare agency. She commented that so often bureaucracies and agencies see the big picture in front of them when a client presents, but often overlook the little things that are so critical to their personal circumstances. These little things, if not detected, or somehow missed in the rush of processing the tsunami of caseloads, can make or break people. They make all the difference. “It’s the little things”, she said, and she is right.
In some situations details may not be all that important to the overall outcome, and we say, “Forget the details for now, just give me the bottom line”. That is often true - sometimes details are incidental, even optional. But there are times when the details – the, seemingly, little things – have huge ramifications. They are indispensable and determine the outcome. They make or break.
We need to be wise enough to discern when a little thing is truly crucial to the final outcome. Many people cannot do this and throw caution to the wind when they dismiss a vital detail.
When it comes down to our daily walk with God we can be so achievement-driven that we miss vital details that can make or break. There was a time when Jesus said …
Matthew 7:21-23 (NIV)
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
Every time I read that text I am terrified! How could things finally come to this a believer? How, indeed? The issue here, for Jesus, is not the great enterprise of performance, achievement and furious activity for His followers. It is relationship – proper relationship! He makes this clear in verse 23: “I never knew you.” “But, Lord, we did all this awesome stuff for you!” That will be a devastating moment for many.
Proper relationship with Jesus, our Lord and Saviour – our life-giver – is more than an optional detail. If it is, technically, a detail, it’s the one crucial detail upon which everything else, and I do mean, everything else, hangs. Without it, the end result means nothing, as Jesus pronounced. Imagine that you come to the end of your discipleship journey only to hear Jesus say the equivalent of, “For the want of nail”?
On another occasion Jesus stopped by at Bethany, at Mary and Martha’s home. Martha, you will recall, upon receiving her visitor gets distracted with all the preparations that she felt needed her attention – so much so, that she actually neglected Jesus. Mary, her sister, on the other hand, is sitting at Jesus’ feet giving Him her devoted attention. When Martha complained that Mary was goofing off and not helping, Jesus gently chided her for all her fussing about, saying …
Luke 10:41-42 (NIV)
"Martha, Martha," the Lord responded, "you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
“Or, indeed, only one”? That is the critical detail - the “nail”, so to speak. Prayer is the ONLY means by which our walk with Jesus is held together so that, when all is said and done, we don’t fail at the end of our day. “For want of a nail”, became a proverbial saying in the 18th and 19th centuries, lamenting an avoidable, needless disaster because of the omission of an important detail.
Think on these things, come back to prayer. It is THE crucial detail that holds the whole discipleship journey together.
Ps Milton