He Came at Night

Heaven had such luster, such delight,

While far below on the footstool of God,

The absence of beauty, the absence of light,

Ruled over river and rock and sod,

And over plants and over creeping things,

And animals with hoofs, and animals with wings.

 

For thousands of years it had been thus;

Day constantly pursued by the night.

Twilight toning to shades of dusk –

The way to walk again lost from sight –

Man floundering in murk and mire,

With only here and there a tiny fire.

 

The Creator saw His creatures’ needs;

Saw the contrast of heaven and earth,

Saw, through darkness, the wound that bleeds,

Saw the man in shadow’s firm girth;

And seeing He felt, seeing He cared,

And destined Heaven’s Light to be shared.

 

Christ left the sight of eternal morn,

Departed in mutual, Sovereign will.

And arrived at night, Ah, time forlorn;

Time that drags for the sad and the ill.

Oh, what Providence, that the Prince of Light,

Should arrive on earth in the middle of the night.

 

And the night to which He came was more,

Than a mere dome of black o’re head.

Sin had blackened the human shore

(Far worse than oil slicks of modern dread)

And proceeded to ink the rest of the race,

From the pagan’s hut to the civilized place.

 

All this night, all this visionless foul,

Christ, the Illustrious, met full of force.

He brightened them both (Don’t ask me how.)

And challenging, changed the nature, the course,

Of the darkness, the ruin, the blackness of sin,

Both outward and inward, the problems of men!

 

So as beautiful stars light the winter’s sky,

Remember that Christ came from brilliance – to none.

Sacrificing for man, that man might glorify

The Light, the only self-brilliant One.

And remember, heaven shared its gift of light,

In the middle of Bethlehem‘s, Ah, the world’s dark night.  – eab, 12/14/79

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Butterfly

For a brief moment only,

A butterfly landed,

Before it expanded,

Its wings and moved on.

But that moment revealed

Such orange and black splendor,

Such structure such form,

As only a Creator could render;

That one wonders why, with butterflies around,

Atheist, agnostics, or their kind can be found.

 

And another thought persists on presentation.

Such beauty, though of such brief revelation,

Was still beauty. 

Beauty, howe’er brief it may be,

Is still beautiful to see!

Friend, your life and mine,

Though complexed and completed by activities of time,

Is just as short by eternity’s standard,

As the moment an insect spent before it bounded.

Make it beautiful, friend, make it remembered by,

The color and structure, and years from now

When you’ve bounded away,

Its beauty will be able to stay.   -eab, 9/1975

 

Written after seeing a monarch at the first curve of graven road leading up to the water tower behind Friendsville, Tennessee.

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