Micah speaks of little Bethlehem suddenly becoming great. The greatness will come about not because Bethlehem suddenly grows, develops a great advertising campaign, or is discovered to be the center of a natural resource like gold or oil. No, the little town of Bethlehem will become great by the visitation of the Lord, what the Lord causes to happen there.
Many of the places the Bible commemorates are small, seemingly insignificant. Judah is not a large country. Even Israel under David and Solomon was no vast, expansive empire. Many towns and villages mentioned in the Bible are hard to locate today. The Jordan River, so significant in the biblical narrative, is a small river when compared to the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Mississippi. What makes any of these places important, what leads to their being mentioned in the Bible, is that they are places where encounters with God occur.
Any place takes on special meaning in our lives when we view it as a site where we have encountered God. It may be in a sanctuary during worship, on a retreat with other Christians, sitting on a bench in the park, in a corner of a coffee shop; but when it suddenly becomes a place where God’s presence has visited us, our “little Bethlehem” becomes a center of peace in our lives.
Like Bethlehem, the places of our God-encounters may seem tiny and the least noticeable, but they become great places in our lives. Today many travel each year to the small Judean town of Bethlehem because God once visited it in the birth of God’s Son.