KENOSIS

I've been wanting to share this poem since finding it several months ago in Luci Shaw's beautiful book called Harvesting Fog,  I know it's still November (barely), but Christmas is fast approaching. Since I've spent the last few years in Mexico for Christmas, I hadn't noticed so much the way CHRIST has been taken out of Christmas. I definitely notice it here in the U.S. of A. this year. Try to find a "meaningful" Christmas ornament, try to say Merry CHRISTmas to anyone, try to listen (in public) to any Christmas songs relating to the ONE who brought us Christmas, and it isn't easy! I'm not saying it has totally disappeared - at my grandkids' school they will be singing CHRISTMAS CAROLS about Christ, no less, this year (yes, it's a public school!!), and I hope and pray that in every Christian home in this nation there will be objects, symbols, language, ways of being, songs, stories, Bible readings, and I could go on, that depict the real reason we celebrate this wonderful holiday. Christ came, not just to be born in a stable, but to SAVE the world from their sins! It's all part of the Christmas story from Christmas to resurrection, to ascension, to life everlasting.

Let's celebrate JESUS this Christmas!    

                            KENOSIS

Reprinted from Harvesting Fog, Copyright Luci Shaw 2010, Pinyon Publishing.

Used by permission of the author.

In sleep his infant mouth works in and out.

    He is so new, his silk skin has not yet

            been roughed by plane and wooden beam

     Nor, so far, has he had to deal with human doubt.

                        He is in a dream of nipple found,

                       of blue-white milk, of curving skin

                    and, pulsing in his hear, the inner throb

                        of a warm heart’s repeated sound.

            His only memories float from fluid space.

     So new he has not pounded nails, hung a door,

            broken bread, felt rebuff, bent to the lash,

            wept for the sad heart of the human race.