God Starts With the Small Things

Bethlehem hardly rated as a centre of great cultural or historical interest yet God chose it as the place for the first visible sign of His redemptive purpose.

Nazareth could barely be thought of as the ideal place to raise one born as the Messiah and Saviour.

Yet these locations became significant, the former for the event of Christ’s birth, the latter for some of the years of His upbringing.  It remains a matter of fascination that God does the significant through the insignificant. He started with a word spoken over darkness. There was no human ear to hear it or substance to echo it. His ways (which are always above ours) are to start from a seemingly impossible beginning and move progressively towards the ultimate completion of a plan to gather all things in their right place and order. Accordingly, He places the potential for a forest in a seed, and the potential for a fully formed, mature human being in a microscopic cell. God’s ways may not start with fanfare; but they move from the micro to the macro, from the beginning of time to its end, and culminate and perfect all things in a fanfare of glory with the Son having completed His work.

God’s ways never change yet each outworked purpose carries its own distinctives and character.  Leaders understand that the large purpose often comes as a word to a frail human who grips its promise weakly.  They know that the world of instant completion exists in man’s world but not in God’s.  Leaders know that they have been entrusted with treasure when they hold a seed. Seeds are for sowing and sowing must be with expectation. When God entrusts a leader with a seed, it is rarely realised quickly; it is often developed generationally.

Your village, town or city, as with your role in life, may seem insignificant to you but do not despise it. God’s choice is to start with the small over the big, the invisible over the visible, the promise over the fully formed.  He works His ways through His own processes - processes to which He is absolutely committed and into which He seeks to engage His people  - by engaging their leaders.