The God of small things...

In my recent trip to Israel, I visited a place on the edge of Bethlehem called the Shepherd's Field. It's traditionally where the shepherds encountered the angels who proclaimed Jesus' coming.For some reason I loved it. I could see the biblical events happening there. It's on a ridge-line and in one corner, as the land falls away, is a very impressive limestone cave. Covered in soot from centuries of campfires and polished smooth by visiting hands, there are mangers - hewn rock troughs - chiselled into the walls.  I could imagine dry-stone rock walls stretched out from the opening of the cave to form an enclosure with a 'narrow gate' for the animals of two or three shepherds - shepherds who were lucky enough to have secured the cave as shelter for the night. It felt authentic to me.Not much has changed. There were shepherds wandering in the valley below, twenty or thirty sheep each. Wandering shepherds then, as now, were small, unimportant, insignificant people.  They are like those folks we see in shopping malls pushing trolleys with a bin, a mop and a dust pan and broom - people rarely given a second thought. But the infinite God of love and grace chose to announce the greatest news since the creation of the world to those shepherds.....and I might have been standing in the place where it happened.I have a new appreciation for those mall cleaners now. They are the sort of people God honours. So I say ‘Hi’ and ‘Thanks’ for what they do. God is the God of small things.As you drive east out of Jerusalem down, down, down into the Jordan Valley, there are Bedouin camps on both sides of the freeway. Made of old iron and tin and wood and cloth; shanty-like. Small, dishevelled, irrelevant, as we wealthy westerners speed by. But while we revere the Patriarchs of the Old Testament - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and co - we forget that this is who they were - nothings in the scheme of the world of their day or ours.It's to the 'nothings' that God comes and keeps His promises. God does what He does and keeps a special place for the small, the marginalised, the tired, the weak. If that is you, God loves you and is keen to bless you. If it is not you, be wise and spend some time with the shepherds and Bedouins of our city. Who knows, they could be angels in disguise. Blessings,Malcolm