From Some Far Place

I wrote this poem some years ago. I used it then in Christmas cards and sang it in church, and every Christmas my heart wanders back to it. It still brings tears to my eyes when I think of what that first night must have been like for a young girl holding the Son of God in her arms, and her husband wondering how he would ever be worthy of the honour of protecting and raising Him. This is the wonder of Christmas.

From Some Far Place

From some far celestial place

unobserved by human eye,

he came,

unfettered by the chains of time

 and space.

A mystery.

God’s vastness,

concentrated in one tiny seed,

would grow to be a child

of form, and face.

She sat within the starlight

and held him while he slept.

Her firstborn child -

she laughed with joy,

would bear her sin and die -

she wept.

Beyond the distant hills

she thought she dimly heard a song

...did angels sing?

Quietly she stored these things

within her heart and thought

of what the years would bring.

Her husband stood beside her,

an ache to understand

inside his heart.

An angel dream had told him -

he had known 

about this moment from the start.  

And yet -

Jehovah’s son? His wife?

Could it be

that they would give each other life?

From some far celestial place

unobserved by human eye,

he came.

A stranger to the weary race on earth.

A mystery.

He, spirit, took on human life

to give us, human, 

spirit birth.