There’s a commercial often played on the radio that gives credit to one person for a saying, but when looked into further, there’s much more evidence to support the idea that the person in question never uttered those words. Sound familiar to any thing you may have ever heard? And, of course, anything we read on the internet must be true, but if that thinking is legitimate, it in fact would make most things untrue. And around and around we go.

So, for the sake of today’s thought, we’ll give credit where credit is listed (ha! how many of you thought it end with ‘where credit is due’?). The saying in today’s title is said to have come into existence during the 16th century. If you find yourself more interested, check out what Wikipedia has to say about it. It’s quite an interesting read. But, I digress…

A molehill is quite small, so to take a thing and make a mountain of it would take much work. Why go to the lengths of trying to make it out to be something that it’s not. So goes the battle between things that are considered sin versus those that are not.

In the Book of Acts, Paul’s decisions and actions provide us with great examples of not making a mountain of a molehill. One such example is Paul deciding to shave his head. Since there was no sin in him not shaving his head or not, he opted to do so because it was a tradition recognized among Jewish Christians. He did so as a form of appeasement and to show them that he had every intention of respecting their traditions, so long as they didn’t cause him to sin. It was what the New Living Translation Study Bible calls a “mutual submission”(1996, p.1748). Paul’s goal was to reach as many as possible in order to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, even if it meant a temporary shave.

What we learn here from Paul is that the minor things don’t matter. We have to find common ground with one another if we want to contribute to the uplifting of the Kingdom. Does this mean we commit sins in order to do so? Certainly not. We must be flexible on some things, while standing firm on others. Only then can we begin to understand what it means to submit ourselves one to another. If we avoid making mountains out of molehills, we, like Paul, can look forward to enjoying the blessings that come from spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

READ: Acts 21:15-40; 1 Corinthians 9

LISTEN: Heath Sanders’ Common Ground https://youtu.be/wxOLR65IIyg