Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Even the rocks cry out

Monday, December 25, 2017

From John 1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, full of grace and truth.

Maybe the rocks are able to celebrate better than we can, because they have no other agenda. Just being rocks is what God made them for. Just being his kids is what God made us for.

Unlike rocks, we need a lot of reminders, and today is the best reminder of all. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."

So let's celebrate.

This is a day for poetry, which strives to fly over the uncross-able divide between our thoughts and God's thoughts.

First from Denise Levertov. Her father was a Russian Hassidic Jew who came to America. Denise, an American, often wrote about her father's homeland. And she wrote about Jesus and his mother Mary. In "Annunciation,"

We are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage.
The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited.
She did not submit with gritted teeth, raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans, consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light, the lily glowed in it, and the iridescent wings.
Consent, courage unparalleled, opened her utterly ... first
To bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity, to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power - in narrow flesh, the sum of light.
And then ... bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love - but who was God.

And second, from Langston Hughes, an African-American man who spent his junior high years in my home town, Lincoln, Illinois. He settled happily in Harlem, and wrote poetry all his life for children and other less jaded souls. Here's a simple sweet poem in which he claims the color of his skin, "Carol of the Brown King":

Of the three Wise Men
Who came to the King,
One was a brown man,
So they sing.

Of the three Wise Men
Who followed the Star,
One was a brown king
From afar.

They brought fine gifts
Of spices and gold
In jeweled boxes
Of beauty untold.

Unto His humble
Manger they came
And bowed their heads
In Jesus' name.

Three Wise Men,
One dark like me -
Part of his
Nativity.

Lord, when a baby is born we might say, "Welcome to our world. Now it becomes yours, too." But Jesus, we must not say that to you, because this is your Father's world. And you are here to remind us with no little sweetness, patience, compassion and subtle intelligence, that your Father is our Father too. Welcome! Let your Wordness fill our hearts and souls and minds. Thank you for this day!

Devotions Archive

Even the rocks cry out

Monday, December 25, 2017