LITTLE BY LITTLE

I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. I will send the hornets ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land. Ex. 23:27-30

When I was a little girl, my mother gave me her prized "reader" to help me learn , just as it had helped her years earlier. I loved one particular story, never dreaming how much it would affect me years later.
It was about a little boy with a small shovel. He was trying to clear a pathway through deep, new-fallen snow in front of his house. A man paused to observe the child's enormous task. "Little boy," he inquired," how can someone as small as you expect to finish a task as big as this?" The boy looked up and replied confidently, "Little by little, thats how! and he continued shoveling.

God awakened the seed of that story at a time when I was recovering from a breakdown. I remember how my "adult" self taunted the weak "child" within me: "How can someone as inadequate as you expect to surmount so great a mountain as this?" That little boy's reply became my reply: Little by little, thats how!" and I did overcome -- by depending on God. But it was one small victory after another. The obstacles facing Israel as they considered claiming the land God had promised them must have seemed insurmountable. But He didn't ask them to do it all at once. "Little by little" is an effective strategy for victory. Trust God to move your mountain, but keep on digging.

-Joanie Yoder