Last night I found myself pondering, as I often do at this time of year, why God chose to enter our experience as a human baby, no, actually as a human embryo, forming in the hiddenness of a peasants girl's womb in a culture that would most probably shame her, and in extremis execute her.  Why would God choose pregnancy, inherently risky - in our own country and time something like 10% of pregnancies fail within the first month - and so utterly ordinary?  Why would God do this at a time that meant the young girl, late in her pregnancy, would have to undertake a journey of some eighty miles on foot - afterall no twenty-first century travel company would have permitted her to travel.  Why would God not ensure there was a guest room waiting when they arrived?  Why would God alert a group of, undoubtedly grubby and possibly grumpy, shepherds out watching sheep?  Why would God drop hints to foreign 'pagans' that would lead them to abandon their homes and travel hundreds of miles to make sense of it all?  Why didn't God give them a map or a sat-nav rather than let them go to see Herod?  Why did so much conspire to make the miracle fail and yet it happened?

Often we have a too-clean Christmas story.  We marvel at how God protected his Son, supplying just-in-time somewhere to stay or an escape route to Egypt (with a whole new set of 'why' questions to ask) rather than marvelling at why God would do something so utterly stupid in the first place.  The potential for failure was enormous - and it isn't helpful to picture God stepping in every time it could have failed and making it all perfectly alright.

The apostle Paul asserts that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdow, which gives me confidence to say that what God did was stupid without fearing a thunderbolt from on high.  The incarnation is a miracle, let's not ever suggest otherwise, and part of that miracle is the very craziness of God in choosing a plan that could, at least humanly speaking, have failed even before it began.

So, as once more my mind is blown by the God who has the audacity to usher in the Kingdom simply by being conceived in a borrowed womb (more on borrowing in the next post), I stand in awe of Divine Stupidity.