Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” “Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” John 1:45-46 [NLT]

Limited experience can become a dangerous storyteller. A few painful encounters, repeated often enough, begin to sound like truth. If I fall three out of five times when climbing a ladder, I might conclude that climbing a ladder is dangerous. If every snake I’ve ever encountered has been a garden snake, I might conclude that all snakes are friendly. If I meet several members of one family and they are all rude, I shouldn’t conclude that the rest of them are also contentious.

I was born in upstate New York, though Athens, Georgia, has been home for twenty-six years. We love it here and expect to remain until God calls us home. Over the years, I have often heard that northerners are rude, as though an entire region could be understood through a handful of encounters. I grew up in a town of a thousand people, among neighbors who were warm and generous. Generalizations can lead us to painfully wrong conclusions.

Nathanael spoke disparagingly of Nazareth, not believing that any good thing could come from such a place. Galilee was a disregarded region in the eyes of the more polished Palestinians of the South. The Galileans were considered unrefined, their accent betraying them before anyone got to know them as people.

Why would God give Jesus a childhood in this disrespected setting? Why set him back with the people of Palestine? All the reasons are not known, but this I do know ~ God does not need prestige to reveal His glory. He chose a nation of slaves and called them His own. He passed over Jesse’s impressive sons and anointed the forgotten shepherd. Again and again, God anoints His choicest servants where human pride would never think to look.

Can anything good come from Nazareth? More than good. Our salvation came from there. Our Teacher, our Redeemer, our King.

Forgive me when I disqualify myself from Your favor based on self-evaluation. I forget who it is that loves me and called me out of obscurity. Amen