“Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this. We know that thou art able to show forth great power, which looks small unto the understanding of men.” (Ether 3:5). Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist, author, inventor and engineer who is perhaps best remembered for his cartoons depicting complicated gadgets that have inspired people to create these “Rube Goldberg machines.” These are the sorts of things where a ball rolls down a track to hit a knife which falls and cuts a string that releases a weight that swings forward to push a car with a match taped to the side which rolls forward and lights the wick of a candle that burns a string that releases a balloon to float upwards until it bumps into a set of dominos that start to cascade into each other until the last one falls onto a spatula that flips a slice of bread into the toaster. They are incredible feats of engineering and are fascinating to watch. God is the ultimate master of the Rube Goldberg machine. The smallest nudge can take us on a sequence of carefully prepared but completely unexpected events that leads us to exactly where we need to be although we would have never in a million years guessed that we would end up just where we need to be. God is always preparing great things for us, but we have to trust that the small and simple things that He prompts us to do are all part of this elaborate and exquisitely engineered Rube Goldberg machine of a plan. When we are in the middle of the machine, when we are the ball rolling down the track or the knife waiting to tip over to cut the string, we can't see the big picture. Why should we stick to this track? Why should we wait for a ball that never seems to come just so we can cut this one little string? Nothing great can come from something that looks so small. But one day if we will just swallow our pride and do the small things anyway, God will reveal the whole picture to us and we will be just as delighted to watch the marvelous complexity of this great and marvelous work that was built out of a thousand small and simple things.
