Maybe Jesus couldn't wait

We celebrate the Annunciation exactly nine months before Christmas, but this exactness is a pious tradition, not a known fact. We don't know for certain that a pregnancy which involved stress, uncertainty and the privations of long journeys on rough, bumpy roads went entirely to plan. And indeed, we've all heard or read about sudden and early births in unexpected places. The baby born in the car which had been rushing to the hospital; or prematurely and inconveniently, on a train or in a public place. Such stories are regularly part of the drama of Call the Midwife: the complicated home birth while the ambulance struggles through dense fog; the young woman who begins labour in an isolated place; the baby racing to arrive before the midwife gets there. It's as if the baby just can't wait to be in the world, never mind how dangerous or frightening its entrance might be, or what conditions might await it.

I've been reflecting on this over the past few days. In part, since noticing these somewhat premature daffodil sprouts in my garden, with a spiky hint of crocus nearby - no doubt all emboldened by our mild weather; but mainly since coming across these words from a former Superior General, Patricia Garcia de Quevedo RSCJ: God, who knows the depths of our hearts, is always waiting, longing to reveal God's love to us yet again. In Advent we focus on our waiting and our longing for God - but what about God's longing for us? What about God's constant longing to reveal his unlimited love; to reveal himself as Love, to each one of us, again and again...?

Which leads me back, via those impatient births, to the greatest and most momentous birth of all, which we will celebrate in a few days' time. What about God's longing to be and reveal himself as Love in our world, clothed in our humanity, and beginning within the fragility of a newborn baby? 

Jesus - being God - could have made sure he was born in a proper house, instead of in a messy, insanitary stable... But that would have meant waiting for a room to become available, and maybe, just maybe, the longing to be Emmanuel, God-with-us and among us, was just too great. Maybe, just maybe, there was a compelling urgency and a deep desire to be born. Maybe Jesus, like those early spring shoots, just couldn't wait another minute to be part of our lives, and all our messiness and beauty, our joys and pain...

And of course - no maybes here! - two thousand years on, Jesus still doesn't want to wait another minute to be part of each one of our lives, in all their messiness and their beauty. Let's not waste time trying to keep him waiting...