Nazareth

Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth. “Nazareth!” Exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” -John 1:45-46

God decided to come down is the strangest of places. Nothing God did was the way we would have done it as citizens of the world:he came to a place that was absolutely despised, born to a lowly family, born in a manger, and grew up a carpenter. God could have done so much better for His son, but that’s not the point. God is in the habit of redemption. He is in the habit of restoring the lowly.

Nazareth wasn’t thought much of, if it was thought of at all. History tells us that Nazareth had less than 200 people in it at the time of Jesus. It wasn’t strategically important, and didn’t have anything to set it apart from other places. But the King decided to make it His home. The King decided this was going to be an important place, and today, 2000 years afterwards, this little town of under 200 people is better known than entire metropolises in antiquity.

Where are the Nazareths in our lives? Where are the places or people that others despise, but who God is looking to inhabit? What opportunities are we missing to minister because, to our eyes, they are not strategically important? What kind of places in our own lives are nothing of value, but just waiting to be inhabited? Then, as now, we run the risk of missing God because of our own perceptions of what is important or not.

God, thank you that you chose the lowly and the despised. Thank you that you are King. Show me the people and places you want to redeem. Teach me to make judgments not based on worldy importance but instead on the value you place on them.