I have these old knives in my home that I could never go without. From the "Ginsu" era of miracle knives. They were my mother's and they actually do still work. My husband and his sisters used to try and hide a hideously melted old knife from my mother-in-law so that she wouldn't use it, but she always found it. I heard a woman on the radio the other day phoning in to answer the question: "What annoys your husband or wife about you?", and guess what: It was the old knife that she kept using. (He'd better be careful before she proves him to be wrong about how sharp it is). But it got me thinking about how the things that don't seem valuable to some, are very valuable to others.
Elizabeth- barren, Mary- too young, the Shepherds- rough, strange and smelly, the Wise Men- foreign pagan worshippers, Anna- a widow and very old, Simeon- too old and Joseph - working class.
Yet, God appeared to all of them in some way or the other to proclaim Jesus' birth and His future as the Messiah.
Would I have scorned had I been there? Would I have "wondered" and whispered about Mary's innocence and even mental health? Would I have doubted that God would reveal His son to foreigners of a different religion? Would I have laughed at the shepherds half asleep, babbling incoherently about a choir of angels and paying homage to a baby (a baby?) who was the promised Messiah? Would I have shaken my head and clicked my tongue at the elderly man Simeon and Prophetess Anna who was clearly too old to still be used by God? And a dirty carpenter for a father?
I can't say I wouldn't have. I can only hope that by grace I wouldn't have missed it. But it does give me hope. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. If He can use the old, the young, the widow, the weak, the strange, the broken, He can use me. And He can use you.
