Small Towns

Earlier today I quietly listened as the person speaking twice disparaged small towns.  I wanted to respond, but it would have been disruptive so I remained quiet.  It is kinda like making jokes about your own family.  It is all right to make them about your own family, but when someone else does, it can become offensive in a hurry.  I know our town is small and its smallness is measured by a number of things and one of those measuring sticks is noted when I say it is a one caution light town.  Except for the moment school is dismissed, there is no danger of traffic jams.     

Outsiders can say what they wish about small towns, but it does not diminish their value.  I am convinced the small town is where common sense is sprinkled in good measure, where people look after one another, and where its young are daily dosed with values that are important.  The greatest asset and the greatest product of small towns is the people who are raised in them.  I am thankful for so many people whose lives of influence intersected my life during those days of bring brought up in the small town.    

And, of course, the small town is also the place of the small church.  The small church in the small town may be small in membership, but so many of them have a circle of spiritual influence which has rippled across some very big ponds.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem which was not really much of a place and grew up in Nazareth, a town not known for much.  One of Jesus' disciples asked when he first heard about Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  (John 1:46)  When Nathaniel, a would be disciple at that point, asked the question, he knew the answer.  Nothing.  A lot of folks have jumped to the same assumption and all of them have been wrong.