“As for you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
though you are the least significant of Judah’s forces,
one who is to be a ruler in Israel on my behalf will come out from you.” – Micah 5:2 (CEB)
Having told the capital it is the problem, Micah looks somewhere else entirely for the answer. Bethlehem. He calls it the least significant of Judah’s forces, which is not flattery softened into humility. It is a fact about population and military strength.
That is the sentence Matthew’s Gospel quotes when the wise men come asking where the child is born. It has been carried in Christmas readings for two thousand years, and it started as a rural prophet’s jab at a capital that was not paying attention to small places.
The pattern holds across the whole Bible and it never stops being surprising. God keeps working through what the important people have already counted out, and the counting is usually done by people very sure of their arithmetic. Who have you already counted out that God might be working through right now?
God who works in small places, help me stop measuring by size. Show me what you are doing where nobody is watching, and let me join it. Amen.