A Sign For You

Sinclair Ferguson writes here, ” Jesus did not come to add to our comforts. He did not come to help those who were already helping themselves or to fill life with more pleasant experiences. He came on a deliverance mission, to save sinners, and to do so He had to destroy the works of the Devil…There is, therefore, an element in the Gospel narratives that stresses that the coming of Jesus is a disturbing event of the deepest proportions.”

It was not an angelic chorus
he first heard, but his mother’s anguished cry.
His first breaths were
scented with dung,
his first sight some smears of blood.
Soon he felt the earth rumble
with trampling horse’s hooves.
He soon tasted the tears of Rachels’ lament.

The homesick vagrants who visited him
first, and wondered at heaven’s exile — they
saw an infant bound in cloths
laid in an animal’s trough,
nestled in a hollow
made in a cold stone, resting
like a corpse in a sarcophagus —
no radiant beams marked his advent.

Now Walmart will outfit the parents with halos,
snuggle the fat baby in a fleece blanket,
and sprinkle the scene with pretty angels
spangled in gold. Hallmark will tell the story
voiced with British accents
staged for suburban flat screens, drenched in sentiment.
The message is stripped of darkness.
But it was for orphans and lepers and hookers,

it was for the night shift workers
He was anointed.
He came for haters of Christmas,
and of Him. Creation was still groaning
at His birth and a dragon waited to devour Him.
That bright star leads  to a tomb.
The sign for you, yet still
is  cloth strips and hollowed-out stone.

Explore posts in the same categories: Poetry

Tags: Christmas, Christmas Poem, dystopian nativity, Jesus, Rachel weeps, Sinclair Ferguson

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