The Gift of Grace
What happened there in Bethlehem two thousand years ago?
What happened there in Bethlehem? I’d really like to know.
Were angels there? Did trumpets blare? Did shepherds really fright?
Did wise men come? Did oxen stare upon a Holy Sight?
Such knowledge still eludes my mind. The contradictions show.
Such certainty’s for other men. It’s not for me to know.
Yet to my eyes in smaller size some miracles were shown to me…
Of love fulfilled, of sorrow stilled in hearts quite lost in misery.
I witness God in all that’s here, both far and near both old and new.
The ageless skies and babies’ cries are awesome hints of what is true.
Two thousand years is but a sneeze, a hair’s breadth of the cosmic span.
A virgin birth? this tiny Earth? Too small a scale for God’s Great Plan.
And yet what size the human soul? What depth the human heart?
What task too small when worries pall beside the Master’s healing art?
I’ve felt the touch. My life renewed when I gave up my tortured will.
My heart found life, my joy reborn, the promised hope God did fulfill.
Let others bless the day the Christ Child came to be.
I’ll share the way God gave new sight to me.
My fetid life in in deadlocked strife was lifted on my darkest night.
My soul redeemed (I ponder how) when following the Maker’s light.
The Gift of Peace
And thinking of the Christmas Boy so wrapped in joy, so blessed with peace,
I wonder how the Ruler’s Son must ache to make the terror cease.
A promised land? This worldly plan has pitted man against God’s grace
The Christ Child’s gift of Peace On Earth was stolen from His Holy Place.
The Samarite that Christ held up has shown us how to love our foe.
Now would this man give up this land to guns and pain and endless woe?
A jurist’s trick? My heart is sick. False promise in the promised land!
A mother’s son without a home? This scheme has come from man’s harsh hand.
It is a tale as tired as time…pitting one against another;
Making waste instead of hope and taking things from trusting brother.
Steeped in greed and blind to need, we fail to clearly understand
That bounty given must be shared if we’re to find our promised land.
So sing the songs and ring the gongs that celebrate that Hopeful Day
But don’t forget the needs unmet of homeless children far away.
What shock to mind were we to find upon being wrapped in God’s Great Plan
That chosen ones were left in need…that we betrayed what He began.
© Dave Dodson, 1997
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