Still Here

I'm still alive! We've moved several times in the past months, changed jobs, etc., but through all the craziness are loving our new home. Tonight I want to post a favorite Christmas hymn that focuses our thoughts not only on the wonder of the babe in the manger, but the mystery of who He was and all He came to do and to be for us.

Secret Birth by Timothy Dudley-Smith

Child of the stable's secret birth,
the Lord by right of the lords of earth,
let angels sing of a King newborn,
the world is weaving a crown of thorn:
a crown of thorn for that infant head
cradled soft in the manger bed.

Eyes that shine in the lantern's ray;
a face so small in its nest of hay,
face of a child who is born to scan
the world he made through the eyes of man:
and from that face in the final day
earth and heaven shall flee away.

Voice that rang through the courts on high,
contracted now to a wordless cry,
a voice to master the wind and wave,
the human heart and the hungry grave:
the voice of God through the cedar trees
rolling forth as the sound of seas.

Infant hands in a mother's hand,
for none but Mary may understand
whose are the hands and the fingers curled
but his who fashioned and made the world;
and through these hands in the hour of death
nails shall strike to the wood beneath.

Child of the stable's secret birth,
the Father's gift to a wayward earth,
to drain the cup in a few short years
of all our sorrows , our sins, and tears--
ours the prize for the road he trod:
risen with Christ; at peace with God.