{"id":1248,"date":"2021-12-20T08:56:58","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T13:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1248"},"modified":"2021-12-20T08:56:58","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T13:56:58","slug":"small-towns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/20\/small-towns\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Towns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus.<\/em>

16.  Bethlehem<\/strong>

Big things happen in small towns.

There are more than 19,500 American communities with fewer than 1,000 residents \u2013 and that number doesn\u2019t include myriad unincorporated villages, hamlets, and wide places in the road. <\/em>

Many of these small communities have distinctive names.  And behind every name there\u2019s a story.

In 1950, Ralph Edwards hosted a popular TV game show.  He announced that the 10th anniversary program would be broadcast from the first town willing to rename itself after the show.  That\u2019s how Hot Springs, New Mexico, became Truth or Consequences. 

Scratch Ankle, Alabama, is infamous as a haven for mosquitoes.  When a local reporter asked one of its residents why the town chose such a strange name, she replied, \u201cIf you roll up your pants and sit out in the afternoon, you\u2019d call it Scratch Ankle, too.\u201d 

A small Arizona community near a fork in the road decided to call itself Y.  State law, however, required that all place names have a minimum of three letters.  That\u2019s why Y, Arizona, became Why. 

An enterprising physician named Dr. Springer \u2013 later branded \u201cthe king of quacks\u201d by the American Medical Association \u2013 founded a small community in California where he hoped to create a medical mecca.  Because his marketing campaign described his efforts as \u201cthe last word in health,\u201d he named the town Zzyzx (pronounced \u201cZye-Zex\u201d), thus ensuring it would appear last in any directory or Yellow Pages listing. 

Greasy Corner, Arkansas, got its name because a restaurant opened inside the same building as an auto shop \u2013 and one customer memorably received a plate of food accompanied by a smudge of axle grease. 

The residents of No Name, Colorado and Uncertain, Texas both filled out applications for incorporation in their respective states.  When asked what names they preferred, they wrote \u201cNo Name\u201d and \u201cUncertain\u201d as placeholders until they came up with better options \u2013 apparently never dreaming those placeholders would become final designations. 

Then there\u2019s Hell, Michigan, so named by 19th<\/sup> century farm wives who were angry with their husbands for regularly transforming their grain into whiskey at a local still.  Yes, Hell does freeze over, especially at this time of year.  Visitors can get married in Hell and even serve as mayor of Hell for a whole day. 

You have to have a sense of humor to live in Good Grief, Idaho; Bitter End, Tennessee; Bugtussle, Kentucky; Ding Dong, Texas; Toad Hop, Indiana; Booger Hole, West Virginia; Accident, Maryland; and Boring, Oregon (which advertises itself as \u201can exciting place to live\u201d). 

Which brings us to the small towns where the Son of God is said to have entered the world and spent his childhood.   

Bethlehem means \u201chouse of bread.\u201d  Historians don\u2019t know precisely why.  It\u2019s possible that a bakery was there, or that the town\u2019s proximity to fertile grain fields enhanced its reputation.  But its significance was changed forever when Jesus said, during the course of his ministry, \u201cI am the Bread of Life\u201d (John 6:35).

The Bread of Life \u2013 the one thing that the whole world needs to be spiritually healthy \u2013 was born in Bethlehem, the House of Bread. 

After Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt for two years, ensuring that Jesus would be safe from the clutches of the murderous King Herod, they returned to Mary\u2019s hometown of Nazareth.  Archeologists guess that around 30 families lived there.  A first century survey listed 200 villages in Galilee.  Nazareth didn\u2019t even make the cut.   

It\u2019s possible that when Matthew tells us that Jesus \u201cwent and lived in a town called Nazareth\u201d (2:23), he\u2019s letting us know that Jesus was perceived as a Nobody from Nowheresville.     

We may be tempted to think that we ourselves are people of little consequence, living unnoticed lives in unimpressive places. 

But when it comes to God, as the theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote, there are no little people and there are no little places.

Big things happen in small towns.<\/em>

It was in a small town, after all, that the most important thing that ever happened \u2013 happened.<\/em>

In Bethlehem, God entered the world as a human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus. 16.  Bethlehem Big things happen in small towns. There are more than 19,500 American communities… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1250,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions\/1250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}