Against the Cold and Dark

Against the cold and dark the trees have all retrenched.
Limbs, once lavish, clack and scrape beneath a paring wind.
Earth and sky, to foot and head, seem equally hardened.

Here in the winter of our sin, it is a strange kind of good news
to wrap our loss, our lostness, in one so small, so tender to bruise;
a child in a manger, shunted by the way, stabled with the animals.

Ah, but in him the spring-pulse, the surge, of God’s very heart
courses with us and for us – his hands and feet to take our part,
to love us and save us; home from our lostness, never to depart.