I think our grandson may be planning to disown us. I think we missed the big race. And we really wanted to be there, since Grandpa got the chance to help, just a little, with the race car.

I didn't write the date down. Drat. One small, insignificant detail and we missed the whole thing. (I think. I haven't caught up with Patrick yet to make sure, maybe there's still a chance...)

Details, details, details. If I don't write them down, they swirl around in my mind, and like the perfect comeback, surface moments or days too late.

It's a simple enough thing. Easily overlooked and only one of many events to come in Brayden's lifetime. All that being said, I still like to think that he missed us just a little at the big race. It was, after all, important to him, and that makes it important to us.

Sorry, Brayden. We'll try to do better next time.

Details, details details. It's the simple things that do us in, the seemingly insignificant things that trip us up.

We rationalize the simple things, all too easily. Just this once, it won't matter.

It's such a small thing, no one will miss it.

It was only a little white lie, no one got hurt.

But if we dismiss the simple things, the seemingly inconsequential, we may risk losing it all. Just this once may prove to be once too often. That one small thing may have meant the world to someone and little white lies destroy as surely as great big whoppers.

There is another danger here.

It was a simple statement, made in passing while Anna Maria and I were walking the campus at Brigham Young University.

"You don't see that very often."

"What?" I inquired.

"Black people walking on campus."

"Why?" I demanded.

The explanation then, in 1973, was that because of Ham, the black man was accursed, and was restricted within that particular fellowship. That simple statement changed everything. I left off my in-depth study and abandoned my planned affiliation immediately.

Such a small thing. Not so small after all. (It wasn't too many years later that the powers that be had a change of heart or "vision" and the restrictions were lifted. Too little, too late. The damage was done.)

It has happened throughout the history of the church and in dismissing the seemingly simple, straightforward message of the gospel and the teachings of Jesus, while interjecting our own cherished, albeit small traditions, we end up with the hodge podge of denominations, creeds and tenets.

A man on the street interview conducted in downtown Manhattan this week asked a simple question about candidate Obama's religion. Apparently, the rumor that he is a Muslim simply won't die. Some guessed Christian, some Muslim, others had no idea. I'm not surprised. If any of them had seen the oft-broadcast clipping from one of the sermons delivered from the pulpit of the United Church of Christ that Obama attends, there was little evidence of the Rev. Wright's Christianity, let alone Obama's.

The vitriolic message wherein Wright admonishes God to damn America rather than to bless America bore no resemblance whatever to the message of reconciliation and repentance that Jesus brought to our world and his other publicized rant against rich, white Americans seemed to completely negate the admonition from Paul that "there is neither Jew, nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

A small thing, really, preferring people of like mind and experience. We all do it. But when it comes to bearing witness for Christ, our comforts, our traditions, our preferences have to go. This is part and parcel of the command found in three of the four gospels "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23)

"I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." (Matthew 5:18)

Nothing in Scripture is insignificant, nor without consequence. If something is condemned therein, it is condemned for all. If something is commanded therein, it is commanded for all. And if we dare to add our traditions, our preferences, our comforts, to Scripture, then the condemnation Jesus spoke to the religious teachers in his day, is spoken to us, today.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to." Matthew 23:13 and following. (NIV)

Things you won't see in heaven: Jim Crow laws