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The Risk of Birth, Christmas, 1973

-Madeleine L'Engle 

This is no time for a child to be born,

With the earth betrayed by war & hate

And a comet slashing the sky to warn

That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honour & truth were trampled by scorn —

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by a comet the sky is torn —

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

It is of note that God unfurls his plan for redemption in the shape of a birthing woman. His hand, universe dusted, opens over earth and in his warm palm sits Mary, heavy with child, full with courage. Caressed by heaven, her back hunches. She cries out in ancient pain, Eternity between her legs, pulling Beginning and End into her shaking arms. She draws Word to her chest, nurses Provision at her breast, kisses the sticky brow of God With Us.  

It is of note that God gave Mary a battle song, that mighty prophetess, the voice of those who unexpectedly know the story before anyone else understands a whisper of the impossible. Mary, stained with afterbirth, smeared with His blood, roars. As deep calls to deep, so Mary cries into the wilderness, her fierce hymn echoed across the ages. 

Women long for birth. We ache for children, even when we cannot name the ache. We die with the pain of childbirth, die and rise again, a new kind of person. We die with the pain of not-childbirth, of empty days, of one line instead of two.

And the world is made again, again, again. The hand of the Almighty still stretches across the cosmos, through time and space and song, laying bare the broken hearts of men and women who long to be redeemed. We kneel beside Mary, shoulder to shoulder with Joseph, and gasp at the unearned, whimpering grace of Emmanuel. God with her.