BBC news website tells us that the 'eyes of the world' are on the royal birth.  Poor Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - a good job they will be far too preoccupied with the whole birth business to be aware of that.  But, really?  The eyes of the world?  Somehow I think not.  Western liberal democracy television news programmes, tweeters and bloggers (royalist and republican) maybe, but no, not the eyes of the world; most of the world has far more urgent and acute things to think about.

A quick bit of web searching suggests that in the UK today there will be on average "one born every minute" (about 2000) and that, sadly, on average on of those won't survive birth.  Globally there will be around 370,000 babies born (can't find a neat match to a UK city but a bit bigger than Nottingham).  And, if the click campaign of 2006 is still valid, around 28,800 children (one every three seconds) will die needlessly in poverty today.  It seems to me that the eyes of the world, if the press is correct, are actually averted from things that aren't quite so nice, and shiny and romantic, in favour of some fairytale.

I genuinely hope that the Duchess of Cambridge is safely delivered of a healthy child, and that parenthood proves pleasurable and rewarding to this young couple.  But my eyes are not glued to the goggle box waiting impatiently for the news.

You, God, slipped into our world without a media circus

The eyes of the Roman world were certainly not on a backstreet in Bethlehem

As a peasant woman brough forth her firstborn and laid him in a foodtrough for safety.

You, God, have your eyes on the squalor of poverty and the danger of the non-western world

You come close to the young mother whose birth pangs cannot be relieved with drugs

And whose haemorrhaging has only one, inevitable and disastrous outcome

You, God, have your eyes on the tiny scraps of humanity born in poverty

You come close to the child who attempts to suckle an empty breast

Whose life-breath is fleeting and failing, life snuffed out almost before it begins

You, God, have your eyes on the tenacious mother and determined baby

Refusing to be another statistic, defying the odds and suceeding to live

Who are bearers of hope and tragedy in equal measure, in a world we never see

You, God, have your eyes on every birthing stool and birthing pool,

Every maternity unit, every home, every refuge and transit camp

Every mother, every infant, every midwife, doctor and birthing partner

And You, God, have your eyes on the young couple in London

Anxious and excited, who know, deep within that, for all the technology money can buy,

Life is a fragile and beautiful gift, and upon your grace (named as such ot not) they depend

God who was born Prince of Peace

God who was born peasant of Bethlehem

God who was born refugee (even asylum seeeker)

God who was born into human life

It is your eyes that watch over every labouring mother

Every unborn child;

And it is to your safe keeping we offer them all

Amen