There is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
  And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.
   - Luke 2:11-12

Jesus is the pivot of all God's counsels in grace. The sign of God's accomplishment of promise and of His presence in the world was a Babe in the manger---the least and lowest thing. It is the token of perfect weakness: a little infant who can only weep, the feeblest thing on earth.

How hard it is to receive that the work of God and of His Christ is always in weakness! The rulers of the people saw in Peter and John unlearned and ignorant men. "When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13).

Paul's weakness at Corinth was the trial of his friends, the taunt of his enemies, but became the boast of himself. The Lord's strength is made perfect in weakness. The thorn in the flesh made Paul despised, and he conceived it would be better if that were gone. He had need of the lesson: "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

It is God's rule of action, if we may so say, to choose the weak things. Everything must rest on God's power, otherwise God's work cannot be done according to His mind. One can hardly believe that one must be feeble to do the work of God; but Christ was crucified in weakness, and the weakness of God is stronger than man (2 Corinthians 13:4; 1 Corinthians 1:25).

For the work of God we must be weak, that the strength may be of God. That work will last when all the earth shall be moved away.

John N. Darby