What is the Christ of God?
It is his touch, his sign, his making known,
His coming forth from out the all-alone,
The stretching of a rod,
Abloom with his intent,
From the invisible. He made worlds so:
And souls, whose endless life should be to know
What the worlds meant.
Christ is the dear “I am,”
The voice that the cool garden-stillness brake.—
The human heart to human hearts that spake,
Long before Abraham.
The word, the thought, the breath,—
All chrism of God that in creation lay,—
Was born unto a life and name this day;
Jesus of Nazareth!
With man whom he had made
God came down side by side. Not from the skies
In thunders, but through brother lips and eyes,
His messages he said.
Close to our sin he leant,
Whispering, “Be clean!” The high, the awful-holy,—
Utterly meek,—ah! infinitely lowly,—
Unto our burden bent
The might it waited for.
“Daughter, be comforted. Thou art made whole.
Son, be forgiven through all thy guilty soul.
Sin—suffer ye—no more!
“O dumb, deaf, blind, receive!
Shall he who shaped the ear not hear your cry?
Doth he not tenderly see, who made the eye?
Ask me, that I may give!
“O Bethany and Nain!
I show your hearts how safe they are with me.
I reach into my deep eternity
And bring your dead again!
“My kingdom cometh nigh.
Look up, and see the lightning from afar.
Over my Bethlehem behold the star
Quickening the eastward sky!
“From end to end, always,
The same Lord, I am with you. Down the night,
My visible steps make all the mystery bright.
Lo! it is Christmas-day!”
This poem was originally published in Pansies: “…for Thoughts” by Adeline T. Whitney (London: Strahan & Co., 1872) and is in the public domain.
Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (1824–1906) was an American writer of poems and juvenile fiction, living in Massachusetts.
Art & Theology 