Bethlehem, You're Too Small

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.” (Micah 5:2)

I have stood on the ridge above a little town called Chewelah at dusk, when the lights begin to flicker on like hesitant stars, and I have thought: this place is laughably small. I imagined what Bethlehem was like - a few thousand people today, fewer still in David’s time. A village, really. Not even the Bethlehem up north that sometimes stole the headlines. Just Bethlehem Ephrathah, the backwater, the afterthought, the place you pass through on the way to somewhere that matters.

Bethlehem was a little more than a comma on the scroll of Judah, a hamlet where sheep outnumber souls, a whisper of dust between the proud hills, yet the Eternal One leaned close and breathed His name across the centuries. And yet God pins eternity to this pinpoint on the map. God seems to have a preference for the insignificant. A stuttering fugitive to face Pharaoh. A shepherd boy to topple a giant. A carpenter’s son to redeem the world. And now a village too small to field its own regiment becomes the birthplace of the everlasting King.

We are wired for scale. We measure importance by crowds, budgets, reach, followers, and square footage. We want platforms large enough to be noticed, stages bright enough to be seen. Bethlehem offends that instinct. It whispers that the math of the Kingdom is different: the last shall be first, the meek inherit the earth, the smallest town births the greatest King.

I wonder what the angels saw when they looked down that night. Did they marvel that the One who spans galaxies consented to the scent of barn animals and the rough hands of a teenage mother? Did they shake their heads at the glorious irony: the Ruler whose origins are from ancient days now wrapped in rags in a nowhere place because every room in the somewhere place was taken? Bethlehem tells me that God is not embarrassed by smallness.

Maybe your life feels like Bethlehem tonight: too small, too overlooked, too ordinary for anything eternal to come out of it. He is not waiting for us to become large, influential, polished, or productive before He steps in. He enters the cramped stable of our limitations and calls it the perfect birthplace for His presence.

Let me tell you something, from one middle-aged nobody to another. I’m fifty-six years old. I’ve got callouses and scars older than some of my coworkers, and a metabolism that quit without notice. I’m basically Bethlehem with laugh lines and a bad knee. And yet here I am, sitting in my yoga pants that have literally never seen yoga, drinking tea that’s been reheated three times, thinking: God really does have a sense of humor.

If He’d waited for the perfect zip code, the perfect lighting, the perfect Instagram-worthy moment, Jesus would still be in the green room. Instead, He looked down at little Bethlehem, population: a couple hundred farmers and one innkeeper who clearly never heard of Airbnb. God said, “Yep. That’ll do.”

No marble palace. No royal fanfare. Bethlehem was the hush before the angels tore the heavens open. It is the small yes that made room for the infinite.

God didn’t need Bethlehem to be big. He just needed it to have room. See how He loves the postscript places, the overlooked, the underfoot, the villages that maps forget. He who measures the heavens with a span curls infant-small beneath your low sky, and every star that night stoops in wonder at the irony: the Ruler whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting, now learning to breathe in the thin air of a nowhere town.

At fifty-six, I finally get it: I don’t have to be Jerusalem. I just have to be willing to pull my humble home, make space in the mess, and say, “Lord, if You’re looking for a place to be born again today… I’ve got a spare bedroom and a heart that’s seen better days, but it’s open.”

He comes — not to the loud,  not to the large,  but to every heart that feels too slight to carry a kingdom.  He is not ashamed of narrow gates, of dim stables, of lives that seem too minor for the weight of glory. Turns out that the baby that was born has always had a soft spot for has-beens, never-weres, and small towns, and women who thought their best years were behind them. The Ruler whose goings forth are from everlasting still delights to come forth from unlikely places. He still chooses what the world counts as insignificant so that no one can boast in anything but Him.

We are all Bethlehem:  small, overlooked, half-ruined, and still the place where God insists on arriving, demanding nothing but the poverty we already own. So excuse me while I go reheat my tea for the fourth time. Bethlehem’s open for business, wrinkles and all.

Prayer:

O God who chose Bethlehem— too small for notice, perfect for wonder—

come again to the little, the hidden, the overlooked places in us.

Be born where we feel least, reign where we are weakest, shine where we are dimmest.

You are not ashamed of small beginnings. Make us brave enough to offer You ours.

Come, Lord Jesus. There is still room.

Amen.