In the Midnight Clear (Light Finds You)
A Poem by Deborah Rutherford
1.
Messiah, Messiah,
trembled lips:
in the empty wilderness;
whispers wisped by wellsprings
as sandals pressed into the somber desert;
on a pasture hillside,
speckled with close-knit flocks
a shepherd carried an ewe
under the unbound empyrean.
2.
Oh, come, oh come ye, Immanuel.
3.
On lowly, sad plains in the midnight clear,
humble shepherds tended their flocks
under a star's brilliance.
Through cloven skies, with harps of gold
reached Angels bringing Good Tidings of Joy,
"A Savior is Born."
Love wrapped the weary world
one silent night,
wide as the liminal space,
the in-between, a threshold to Cross
because God so loved the world,
Messiah, Messiah.
4.
There was no room in the inn,
only a stable's dark with a manger.
A mother's face glistened
in a babe King's glow
among the gentle ox and lamb.
A King's palace
where hay hung as royal curtains,
with jewels in the sky,
and robes of swaddling cloth,
regal all the same.
The shepherds hastened to Bethlehem
and found their King
swathed in swaddling cloth:
God of Love,
Incarnate,
Miracle of Salvation:
Messiah, Messiah.
5.
Mary pondered all that had happened:
the wonder from her womb
birthed like you and me,
God in human flesh stretching
His little toes and fingers,
our Maker's first cry.
Holding her baby,
the Christ, Messiah for all,
she kissed the face of God,
her sleeping child,
The Great I am.
6.
For God so loved the world:
Immanuel,
the greatest gift of all
in the darkest moment of all.
When you are searching in the dark
the Light finds you.