A friend from Namibia, very poor himself, talked of a recent trip to Nicaragua where he lived among the poorest of the poor and, he said, was treated like a king. The good people of the village wouldn’t stop giving him everything they had...their food, their beds, their friendship. He was struck by the reality that it is indeed the poor who are richly blessed by the things of God. It is the poor whose lives are abundant in generosity, kindness and love. What a curiosity! The very things that we believe are curses from God turn out to be blessings.

Could it be that those burdens that we face...the call to forgiveness, love of enemies, service to the poor...are really the first stirring of the birth of God within us? Is it possible that the very issues we find so abhorrent are the birth-canals for God?

Wild idea, isn’t it?

Maybe what we should be fervently praying for, this Advent, is that we might be hungry, that we might become lowly. Maybe what we ought to be doing is emptying ourselves of all that separates us from God. Maybe we should all throw away our celestial birth-control pills and allow God to be born by us as God was born by Mary. Maybe the real Advent question is what is preventing us from being impregnated by God?