Of All the Places in All the World

Christmastime is here.

Homes are decorated, city governments even have trees and decorations throughout, Linus and

Charlie Brown are on TV,  churches are filled with  music and candles-there is no denying it

we are in the throws of the season that means everything to many of us.


Each year I like to ponder and mull over a particular part of the Nativity story.

God poured so much detail into every aspect of that Holy Night, if we're not careful we'll miss it. . .

after all this is a story most of us have heard since childhood and could recite backward

and forward.


This year I've been thinking quite a bit about the Place where it all happened.

Bethlehem.

A town, full of sheep and shepherds and a harried inn keeper.

Bethlehem, 30 miles from Jerusalem -but it might have just as well been 3,000.

That little seemingly insignificant dot on the map of Israel, but where God chose to

give us Hope wrapped in clothes and laying a feeding trough.


As I've been pondering Bethlehem  I think the thing that has struck me the most is it's

seemingly insignificance to those around it.

Although, it did have a claim to fame in being the hometown of Israel's greatest king and poet, David,

those years had come and gone.

The word that keeps circulating though my mind when I think of how those who lived and worked in

Bethlehem during that time is --insignificant.

Insignificant place full of insignificant people-at least to those who didn't know better.



And as a person who has been able to recite Luke 2 since I was 5 years old this thought has struck

me in a fresh and powerful way this Christmas time.

Maybe because I found myself in what to the outside world looks like some pretty insignificant

places.

Home with babies, folding laundry and cleaning bathrooms.  Trying to stretch a dollar farther

and farther at the grocery store.  Wonder how all of 'this' could matter to the kingdom.

Perhaps you work in what my Sweet Momma has termed a 'cube farm' and you wonder how

what you do and who you are could possible matter to anything in the light of eternity.

Single, Widowed, Divorced, New Mom who hasn't figured out how to a get a shower in every day.

Sure others are doing big things for God, but you? You find yourself in the most insignificant place

you can think of.

Oh! How I love that about God! How He bends down to the most insignificant places and changes

everything.



On that night, so very long ago when the world changed forever, God sent his son, Jesus 'The Bread

of Life', to  be born in the little insignificant town of Bethlehem 'The House of Bread'.

Thirty miles away from royalty -both of kings and religion.  But, God chose that places to cradle

and care for his one and only son.

Maybe no one else-not even can you-can understand how the place you're in now can be one  of

any significance for the kingdom.  It doesn't matter.

God is writing his story.  His story that includes you.  And He knows.  He's always known.

Just like he knew Bethlehem would be the birthplace of his son--

Micah 5:2a The Lord says, “Bethlehem, you might not be an important town in the nation of Judah. But out of you will come a ruler over Israel for me. 



He knows where you are, He sees you.  There is not one place that is insignificant to Him.

Be on the lookout-just like that night so long ago-He might just be ready to change everything.

Now, to the those rulers in Jerusalem  or the farmers near by, nothing physical about Bethlehem 

might have changed, but those who saw and believed -they knew-OH how they knew-everything

had changed.

God might never pick us up and physically move us. Our outside position may never change, others 

might always see where we are what we do as insignificant, but we know Who has come and the 

work He  is doing.

So, change those diapers, cook those meals, file those forms, do what you do and know that

no where is insignificant if Jesus is there.


Peace,