“If Advent is the season of waiting, Christmas is the season of wonder,” so may this poem and the ones to follow aid us in our wondering at heaven’s answer to our heart's deepest pleas.
O Adonai | Malcolm Guite
Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue;
Unseeable, you gave yourself away;
The Adonai, the Tetragrammaton*
Grew by a wayside in the light of day.
O you who dared to be a tribal God,
To own a language, people, and place,
Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,
If so you might be met with face to face:
You’ve Come to us here, who would not find you there,
Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,
Who heard no more than thunder in the air,
Who marked the mere events and not the myth;
You’ve Touched the bare branches of our unbelief
And blazed again like fire in every leaf.
*the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH and articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah.