1 Corinthians 1:28

Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, a city famous in the ancient world for wealth, intellectual culture, and sharp social hierarchies. He makes a stunning argument: God deliberately chose what the world considers worthless — people without status, power, or influence — to undo the very systems the world considers important. The phrase 'things that are not' is a Greek expression for things considered non-existent, beneath notice, of no account. Paul is saying God specifically recruited the people society had written off and used them to dismantle what the powerful had built. This wasn't accidental — it was the strategy.

God, you have always worked through unexpected people in unexpected places. Forgive me for the times I've dismissed what you might be doing through someone I had already written off. Remind me that you chose the lowly — and that includes me. Amen.

'The things that are not.' That phrase should stop you. Paul isn't talking about objects or abstract concepts — he's talking about people. People who had been told, in a thousand subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that they didn't count. In Corinth's world, that meant slaves, women without property rights, manual laborers, foreigners. People who didn't get invited into the philosophical salons or the civic halls of honor. God looked at those people — the ones the system had rendered invisible — and said: you're exactly who I'm looking for. This should do something to how you see yourself and how you see others. If you've ever felt too ordinary, too broken, or too behind to be used for anything significant — that feeling might actually be the precise qualification. And if you're tempted to build relationships or communities that only look impressive and well-resourced, this verse is a direct challenge to that impulse. God has always had a habit of doing his most remarkable work through the people no one else thought to invite.