Where God Wants To Be
Where the understanding is outraged,
where human nature rebels,
where our piety keeps a nervous distance;
there, precisely there, God loves to be;
there he baffles the wisdom of the wise;
there he vexes our nature, our religious instincts.
There he wants to be, and no one can prevent him.
Only the humble believe him and rejoice
that God is so free and grand,
that he works wonders where man loses heart,
that he makes splendid what is slight and lowly.
Indeed, this is the wonder of wonders,
that God loves the lowly.
"God has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden."
God in lowliness --
that is the revolutionary, the passionate word of Advent.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Mystery of the Holy Night