As we remember the fourth and final Sunday of Advent and look towards its culminating event--the incarnation, the physical appearance of God in human flesh--tomorrow, let us ponder the import of its origins.  As the gospel accounts make clear, Jesus was born in Bethlehem (literally, "house of bread"), a town that we might today call a hole in the wall, a little village largely forgotten by the rest of the world.  Few people cared what happened in Bethlehem.
     Nor did few people care when, after God told Joseph to take Mary and Jesus and flee the country to avoid King Herod's deadly predations, Jesus lived awhile in Egypt.  Mary and Joseph were likely viewed as just one more set of refugees, one more group of aliens moving through the flotsam of the Empire, their lives a mirror of countless migrations before:  no big deal.
     But this is precisely God's point.  Though Jesus was an alien and refugee, born in obscurity and forgotten and overlooked by the rest of the world, he was the one in whom God chose to make himself known to all humanity.  Jesus was the one whom God would use to reconcile himself to his human creation, the one who whom God would use to draw all people to himself.  In Jesus, the poor and neglected refugee, was the greatest mission of all time.  It's the ultimate irony, the greatest surprise.
     But isn't that what God is all about?