He will come: A Carol To Light The Dark

 

‘‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty.’

Malachi 3:1

 

He will come! He shall come! This has been the message all along. This baby born King, this righteous branch, this Prince of Peace, this shoot of hope, the messenger of the covenant; He shall come! 

And He did. 

But this is not fairytale story. He didn’t come into a perfect world. He came into ours.

In the dark. 

To be the light. 

Here is a poem to end our time of waiting with the prophets. Tomorrow we follow the Christmas story into the gospels… 

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A Carol To Light The Dark

 

When all our breath is gone what have we left?

When conflict after conflict drags us down

When deaths are heaped in numbers on our screens

And our ‘leaders’ wrangle each other for the crown.

When a virus born of greed stalks in the night

and Christmas revives the pain of all we’ve lost

When the anguished left behind now have to fight

to keep on breathing midst the aching loss.

When the ugly underbelly of fear and hate

rises to the surface, knee on throat

And deaths dealt heavy-handed by the State

Drag all our humanity through the dirt.

Was there ever a time when angels sang? 

Was there a time when joy would brim and spill?

When Peace on Earth was actually a thing?

Whispering life and truth and all is well?

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When fires scorch the surface of the earth

lighting a world teetering on the brink

While human greed in endless global reach

primes to outlive the planet on which we spin.

As species disappear and climates writhe

And island homes are sinking in the sea

We pretend its all okay, it’s all alright

Entranced by ‘tweets’ and texts on tinselled screens.

This Christmas we don’t count the Advent days

We don’t count the species dying off

We don’t count the suicide of souls

Instead we count our ‘likes’ on selfie shots.

Was there ever a time when angels sang? 

Was there a time when joy would brim and spill?

When Peace on Earth was actually a thing?

Whispering life and truth and all is well?

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Come Christmas, crawl with me into my cave

Keep me warm in this winter-life we’ve built

Social distancing from sadness, loss and pain

Clawing for the hope your carols spelled.

How have we missed the meaning in the songs?

The truth behind the merry Christmas tunes?

Distracted by the trimmings and the throngs

Of merry making emptied of the true.

Our carols in the past hid the whole truth

Avoiding the sharp edge and welting blow

Our tinsel and our gifts tiding fake news

Hiding the Christmas truth in golden glow.

The ugly underbelly carols hid

of human domination on the earth

The emptiness of no room at the inn

The poverty of a child born into want.

This was the time when angels sang.

This, the time when joy did brim and spill.

When Peace on Earth was actually a thing.

Whispering life and truth and all is well.

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Christmas came into a manger cave

shivering in this winter life we’d built

Arriving in our sadness, loss and pain

bringing the hope our carols still misspell.

God came, wrapped in rags and filth and rot

Receiving the dregs of all the earth He owns

With the refugees He threw His lot

Fleeing the reach of power, forced from home.

Political tremors felt on that dark night

Grasped the throats of infants as they slept

Herod dealing vengeance for the crime

Of God coming to earth, as angels wept.

This was the time when angels sang!

This, the time when joy did brim and spill!

When Peace on Earth was actually a thing!

Whispering life and truth and all is well!

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We don’t know Him in the tinselled wreaths

And we won’t hear Him in the jolly songs

He’s in the darkest valleys of our lives

Where we discover He’s been with us all along.

All our darkness is not news to Him

He who bore our burdens to the end

We, so bound and battered in the din

He, still intent on reaching out His hand.

The joy of tinsel wrappings can’t contain

The gift that Christmas was in all the dark

And how in deepening pitch we see the blaze

of the light that came for us, into our night.

In all the shredded threads of our humanity

And all our fruit of emptiness unleashed

In this night of sickness, loneliness and greed

the real Christmas story is still the song we need.

So sing this carol bravely in the night

Until the dawning blaze of rising sun

The Light comes deep into the pitchest dark

And by all our darkness isn’t overcome.

There truly was a time when angels sang.

And there will be a time when joy will brim and spill.

Peace on Earth is actually a thing.

Whispering Life and truth. All will be well.

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