Christmas, Whidbey Island, 1975

(This post was originally published in 2014, on the occasion of the Winter Solstice.)

Yesterday was the solstice: the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. I heard a friend say that she loves the solstice, because it means the sun has been flung back northward again. Imagine that: the cosmic ping-ponging of a star so much larger than ourselves, hemmed in, we like to think, by gravity and our calendars.

“It’s our turn,” says the Northern Hemisphere, and Australia and the South reply, “Well, alright, then,” and send the sun back. We will trade again in six months when my children’s necks are sticky with sweat, and the fireflies dance under the trees.

It is fitting that in the darkest days of the year, we celebrate the first advent of the Lord Jesus. The people who have walked in darkness behold a great light, and He makes all things new (Is. 9:2; Rev. 21:5).

He must be made low to rejoice with the Father on high (Phil.2). He was foretold in the Garden, on the day the gate was flung closed and locked (Gen.3). And He would conquer through lowliness, in the form of a man. God in the manger. Creator with no place to lay His head (Luke 9:58).

In the early chapters of Breath for the Bones, Luci Shaw explores the idea of metaphor, word made flesh. She reminds us that the centerpiece of God’s creative imagination is Bethlehem, “…site of the Incarnation, flash point of the joining of heaven and earth, invisible and visible reality, transcendent and material.”

She shares this poem from her colleague, Loren Wilkinson. May it bless you as you consider the Word made flesh this week.

Not in the waves, not in the wave torn kelp;
Not in the heron by the lake at dawn
Nor owls' haunting of the wood,
Nor rabbits browsing frightened on the lawn;
Neither in the widening whirl
Of seashell, galaxy, or cedar burl,
Nor in the mushrooms' bursting of the humid ground
May God the fathering be found,
If not found first in Bethlehem,
In thistly hay, on hoof-packed earth,
Where a girl, cruciform with pain
Grips manger boards in child birth.
There in the harsh particular,
In drafts, and stench of cow manure
The squalls of Christ, Creator, sound;
Where God grasped not at Godhead in a child
There only will the God of life be found.
Now, if we upon this wave-shaped bluff
Stand in the straw of Bethlehem
Then God shines out from everything;
The agate in the surf, the withered flower stem,
The fish that gives its body for the seal,
The flesh, the fruits that form each common meal,
The dance of pain and love in which our lives are wound;
Since Christ was flesh at Bethlehem,
In all the world's flesh may God be found.

And here is the poet himself reading this work for us. Merry Christmas!

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Kelly Keller

Kelly Keller is the managing editor of Story Warren. She has her BS in Elementary Education from Messiah University and has taught various ages, but her favorite was worldview and literature with high school students. The “gap” in her resume is actually a window of eighteen years of homeschooling, which she recommends as an effective, though demanding, way of expanding one’s home library.

When she’s not behind her laptop, Kelly enjoys live music, baseball, reading great books, and traveling with her husband, David. Kelly hails from beautiful snowy New England, but after nearly two decades in North Carolina, she feels right at home.

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