Take all your hope and longing;
cover it in blood, urine, faeces, straw.

Cut the chord to your dreams
with a field knife or clenched jaw.
Here lays the King of the Jews.
Crowned between thighs,
Held in arms of exhaustion.

Bathed with tears, sweat
and the soft tones
of a mother
singing songs
of deliverance
between breaths
as the King of Glory
feeds folded at her breast.

What newborn would you not
bend a knee for?
What labouring mother
would not make room for life?

Here’s how God
chose to be with His beloved;
in a state of utter surrender
and dependence;
making His way into the world
through a uterus. Trading a heavenly crown
for one of mucus. Later, finding
woven thorns pushed in its place as,
once again, God surrenders
to the fulness of humanity’s mess –
reconciling it all
to Himself;
counting no soul’s sin
against them.

from Winters Never Last: Poetry Chapel vol 2. 2021.