Reflection – The Bits
May 23, 2026
My mother, especially as she got older, would frequently quote her mother, my Nana. Certain words, phrases, and proverbs that she recalled made no sense to me. Perhaps because they were part of an older lexicon, but more likely because they were British sayings, as both my Nana and Mom were born and raised in England. One of my favorites, whose meaning has remained a conundrum to me for decades, was “well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs”. After fairly extensive research, the meaning of the phrase still remains a mystery. Two other favorite phrases were used by Mom when she was tidying up the house. The first was, “Well, it will only get ‘a lick and a prayer’ today,” indicating just a quick pick up and a promise to do more another day. The second was, “I’ll just get the bits and pieces today.” I have always loved this idea of only attending to the parts that were visible and leaving those unseen for another day. I like this because sometimes the bits are the important parts.
When I was working on my graduate degree, I was required to take a literature course. Never, and still not, a fan of reading fiction, I thought that a course on Tolstoy would be interesting and supplement my major studies in history. Not known for his brevity, I did find Tolstoy’s short stories to be particularly enjoyable. One in particular, “Why do men stupefy themselves?” was memorable because Tolstoy writes about the bits in life, which immediately reminded me of my Mom and her words about the bits. In the story, Tolstoy writes: “one may say that true life begins where the tiny bit begins — where what seem to us minute and infinitely small alterations take place. True life is not lived where great external changes take place — where people move about, clash, fight, and slay one another — it is lived only where these tiny, tiny, infinitely small changes (the bits) occur.”[1]
The same is true, I believe, about our relationship with God. Our connection with God changes, especially through the small moments, the bits, because God is not only in the grandiose miracles, but also in the non-miraculous, the daily, the bits.
The book of I Kings in Scripture tells us that God indeed is in the bits, the details, and the smallness of life. The prophet Elijah is told to wait for the Lord on a mountain. There was a great wind, a fire, and an earthquake, but the Lord did not appear in the great wind, or in the fire, or in the earthquake. Instead, the Lord appeared in a gentle whisper. (I Kings 19) God, the omnipotent, all-powerful Creator, and almighty, does not reveal Himself to Elijah in the fire, earthquake, wind, or other dynamic forces of nature, but instead with His gentle whisper. Elijah’s deep faith in God allows him the discernment to hear the whisper of His creator. He doesn’t need the wind, fire, or earthquake to be faithful to God; all he needs is the whisper.
In our daily lives, do we pay attention to the bits of God? Do we hear the whispers? Do we feel His presence when even fleeting, small moments, gestures, words, and actions of others show us that God is working in their lives and ours? We all easily observe and react to the power of the wind, the destruction of fire, the ruination of an earthquake, but sometimes either barely notice or take for granted the whispers, the bits. In order to notice, appreciate, and be enlivened by the Lord when the bits appear, we need to be open to seeing them, we need to be attentive, watchful, and not dismissive. Our lives can be so difficult in a fast-paced world that seems, at times, to work against us. What a help, a blessing, it is to have the bits of God, His whispers in our lives. They are present everywhere
[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Do_Men_Stupefy_Themselves%3F