So these three elderly woman enter heaven, and sure enough, there are these little ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, one of the old ladies accidentally steps on one. Along comes St Peter with the ugliest looking man she ever saw. He chains them together and says "Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!" 

Soon the second old lady steps on a duck, and along comes St Peter, who doesn't miss a thing, and with him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment. 

So the third old lady, well she’s walking around heaven watching VERY carefully where she steps. She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks. After all this time St Peter comes up to her with a very good-looking man (imagine me but with blonde hair and blue eyes). St Peter chains them together without saying a word. The old woman looks up at this good-looking man, bats her eyelashes, smiles at him, and remarks, "Well honey, I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you forever?" The good-looking man looks at her confused and replies "I don't know what you did. But I just stepped on a duck!"

Imagine if our eternal destiny was determined by one small mistake? For the most part, life is made up of all the small things. It’s plodding through the small, boring and seemingly unimportant moments of the day that is actually making us who we are. Our virtues and talents may come out in the big moments of life, but they are built in the small moments of each day. 

In this way, with God’s guidance, but not force, we design our own lives like a tapestry. Every thread is important in making up the complete picture. However, every thread is only small, and so if we do happen to poke the string through the wrong hole, we just do our best to undo the damage and continue creating the tapestry of our life. 

The tapestry you and I are now creating on earth is the tapestry God is going to hang in God’s home for eternity and we are continually designing and redesigning these tapestries each and every day in each of the little things we do every day. 

But we shouldn’t get too worried when we put a foot wrong or make a mistake, because every hour is a new chance to do better. So you come into work at 9am and are nasty to everyone until 10am. All is not lost. Maybe you can use 10am to 11am to cool down, 11am to midday to apologise, lunchtime to relax, and then spend the afternoon acting like a living saint. Hopefully, that’s what your workmates or family will remember, if you can keep up the charade long enough.

St Frances Xavier (1506-1552) only lived to 46, but he baptised more people than anyone in the history of Christianity since the first Apostles. What was the secret to his success? Well, he had a saying “Be great in small things.”

If we can only get the small things right, the big things, when they come, will almost fall into place. There are plenty of little ducks around and we all tread on one now and then. When you do, it’s not the end. Pick her up, dust off her wings, and just avoid the next one.