By Ife J. Ibitayo
Christmas is less than one week away. It’s the holiday that more than two billion people circle in red ink on their calendars each year. In fact, it redefined our entire calendar system. Yet the prophesied Messiah—the ultimate chosen one—the King of Kings and Lord of Lords didn’t shuttle down to earth amongst flaming chariots and cherubic trumpet blasts. He wasn’t born to royalty or reared in a place. Rather, he was conceived in a stable, visited by shepherds, and raised in obscurity. Three long decades passed before He began His short ministry. And centuries followed before Christianity graduated from being a fringe sect of the Roman Empire to its foundational faith. Only a select few knew the promise of the baby lying in a feeding trough that fateful Christmas night.
Small Seeds, Enormous Trees
This pattern is not relegated to Jesus’ birth; it’s a core element of God’s kingdom. During the middle of His earthly ministry, Jesus said “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed…though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches” (Matthew 13:31, 32).
To illustrate this point, I’d like to share a story: In the early 1900s, a medical missionary named William Leslie lived and worked amongst the tribes in a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo. After nearly twenty years of hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, he had a falling out with some of the tribal leaders and was asked never to return. He returned to the United States and died less than a decade later believing he’d never made a significant impact among the Congolese people.
However, a century later, a group of American missionaries traveled to that same region and found a network of faithful, reproducing churches that traced their origins to Leslie’s time there. Thousands came to faith because of the faithfulness of this one man.
So too in our own lives, God may have given us a seed to nurture. The class we teach, the small business we operate, or the single child we rear, may seem like a calling too insignificant to matter in the long run. But God says, “‘Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin,” (Zechariah 4:10a). He is the God of small beginnings, and He enjoys transforming our small seeds into enormous trees.
Conclusion
The wonder of Christmas is not simply that God came down to earth. He’s done so many times throughout history, and His people shuddered in fear (Hebrews 12:18-21). Rather, it’s that God chose to come down in smallness, as a baby, in a manger born to a disgraced teenage girl and a poor carpenter. And from that lowly starting point, our world was changed forever.
“The angel answered [Mary], ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
(Luke 1:35-37)