Think of how God works: Jesus, the king of the universe, is born as a spitting baby, in a dirty stable, in an obscure village called Bethlehem. Regardless of what we may know now, this was not an auspicious beginning. In his bestseller, All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum ends a section on his seasonal cynicism about Christmas by saying "What's the big deal about this infant in a manger thing. Babies and stables both stink. I've been around both and I know. Bethlehem is a pit according to those who have been there [sic]." We may not like the words but they're true. God did not pick the great things to glorify His Son. He used His Son to glorify the insignificant things. With His Son He brought glory to Bethlehem and heaven to a stable, and that which is insignificant and smelly He made so beautiful that we sing songs about it. In a later time He would even make a despicable branch of thorns into a crown of glory, and save souls by it. God drapes the sparkling tinsel of holy purpose on the most insignificant things. The Christmas images remind us how beautiful His designs can be for that which the world would reject.

God also uses the failed things of this world for wonderful purposes.

God's design shines more brightly in the realization of the nature of Israel's insignificance. The nation's coming ruin is a sign of failure. She had a past of greatness and the potential to be great again. That she would be reduced to a sprouting stump from so great a tree is a mark of terrible failure. Even the word "branch" used here became synonymous with failure. The word "branch" is actually the root word behind Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up. How clever of God to see to it that the Righteous Branch grows up in "branch town." Far from the term being one of distinction, it was a mark of shame to be from branch town or "twig-dom" because the name was reminiscent of Israel's shame. That is why when Jesus said He was from Nazareth the people snickered and said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth, twig-city?" (John 1:45-46). Yet by weaving His life into Nazareth, Jesus made the two special, to say the least.

How important it is for all of us to know that God can use insignificant failures to yet accomplish His glorious purpose, for these same failures can come from so many directions in life. On one occasion I travelled to another city to speak at a conference for a well-known church in the evangelical world. I stayed in the home of the pastor -- by all accounts a very devoted man. One afternoon as I was preparing my message for that evening I could not help hearing the sounds of the pastor's children playing outside. I guess you could call it playing. One child, the nine-year-old son of the pastor, dominated the rest of the children with cruelty, profanity and intimidation. It was hard to listen to and even harder to study through, so after a while I walked out of my study to take a break. My room opened at the bottom of a stairway and I looked up to see the mother of the boy watching him out of the window at the top of the stairs. She was almost a silhouette against the window which made her obvious pain a more poignant picture. She was watching him with shoulders drooped and head down, and when she heard me she turned and I realized she was crying. She knew I also had heard her son, and through her tears she said, "I don't know what to do with him. John doesn't know either, all we know is that we have failed. He's only nine years old and we have already failed."