Advent - For God's Little People

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus  that all the world should be registered. This was the first  registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And  all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph  also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to  Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem,  because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be  registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.  (Luke 2:1–5)

Have you ever thought what an amazing thing it is that God  ordained beforehand that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem  (as the prophecy in Micah 5 shows); and that he so ordained  things that when the time came, the Messiah’s mother and  legal father were living in Nazareth; and that in order to fulfill  his word and bring two little people to Bethlehem that first  Christmas, God put it in the heart of Caesar Augustus that all  the Roman world should be enrolled each in his own town?

Have you ever felt, like me, little and insignificant in a  world of seven billion people, where all the news is of big political and economic and social movements and of outstanding  people with lots of power and prestige? 

If you have, don’t let that make you disheartened or unhappy. For it is implicit in Scripture that all the mammoth political forces and all the giant industrial complexes, without their  even knowing it, are being guided by God, not for their own  sake but for the sake of God’s little people—the little Mary and  the little Joseph who have to be got from Nazareth to Bethlehem. God wields an empire to bless his children. 

Do not think, because you experience adversity, that the  hand of the Lord is shortened. It is not our prosperity but our  holiness that he seeks with all his heart. And to that end, he  rules the whole world. As Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart  is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” 

He is a big God for little people, and we have great cause to  rejoice that, unbeknownst to them, all the kings and presidents  and premiers and chancellors of the world follow the sovereign  decrees of our Father in heaven, that we, the children, might be  conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ.

(From "Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent 2012", by John Piper)