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Love Broke Through Time
On the first Christmas night Love broke through time
With pain to Mary and her child whose bed
Was straw with ox and ass in nearby stalls.
Love arrived in suffering and shame.
All glory be to God and peace to men!
He radiated light and love. He dined
With the rejected ones. He taught and fed
The masses. Twelve unknowns he chose and called
His friends. He healed the broken, poor, and lame.
All glory be to God and peace to men!
His life and ministry were both defined
By love and sacrifice. His precious head
Was bloodied by the crown of thorns. No flaw
Was found in Him. He chose to take the blame.
All glory be to God and peace to men.
A greater love than this no man can find.
He gave his blood for wine, his flesh for bread
And kept each jot and tittle of the law.
He saves the sinner who calls on His name.
All glory be to God and peace to men.
Now we are called to love until the time
He calls us home where suffering will end.
It will be indescribable! The awe
We feel will overflow in endless praise—
All glory be to God and peace to men!
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Gigi Ryan is a wife, mother, grandmother, and home educator. She lives in rural Tennessee.
Gigi, this is a fascinating and delicious rhyme reflected through all the verses that must have been written with your own love breaking through time. It seems rare to me also to have a Christmas time poem that covers the life, purpose of salvation, death, and our own future made possible by His birth. Beautifully done.
Dear Roy,
I am thrilled that my love broke through this poem. Some of my favorite Christmas hymns include elements beyond the Christmas story; it is my joy to imitate that concept. One of my favorite Christmas verses is a rarely sung one from Hark the Herald Angels Sing –
Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head
Adam’s likeness, now efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
The phrase, “Stamp Thine image in its place,” gives me chills and tears every time I read or sing it.
Thank you for sharing these observations.
Gigi
Gigi, thank you for the insight and beautiful expressiveness of this poem.
I am intrigued by the rhyme scheme. Did you create it?
Dear Mary,
I did not create the rhyme scheme. James Sale did. I am happy to point you to his poem that introduced me to his Saleian form.
https://staging.classicalpoets.org/2024/05/10/orpheus-a-poem-by-james-sale/
Thank you so much for commenting.
Gigi
Dear Gigi – thank you so much for the acknowledgement and I am glad that my monthly poetry newsletter is proving so useful to you. This is a very good poem and I am sure you can ‘feel’ yourself just how liberating it is for you to be able to move away from just couplets. Couplets are great, but overused they can become a strait-jacket; here you have much more freedom – though with a tight constraint – to explore ideas. Excellent work.
Gigi, I am particularly interested in the subject of Time from a personal perception standpoint, from a scientific standpoint and from a theological standpoint. Your poem points to God in a powerful way as the Creator of Time itself who is the only one capable of breaking through time and thereby connecting with us weak mortal creatures. And He did so through love as manifest in His incarnation. This is a very deep, beautiful and special Christmas poem.
I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and wish you all the best for the coming new year!
Dear Brian,
We have a mutual awe of the the concept and Creator of time. As if science alone were not fascinating enough, thinking about it from a theological perspective is staggering.
Thank you for your comment.
Gigi