Seed-planting and Fruit Bearing
/
Adoration of the Shepherds by Dutch painter Matthias Stomer, 1632
A Twilight Musing
During the Christmas Season we concentrate on the beginning of God’s greatest act of seed-planting, the impregnation of Mary by the Holy Spirit. We do well, however, to remember that the immediate fruit of her womb, the birth of the Incarnate Son of God was not the end of the matter, but the beginning of the ever-expanding purposes of God through His Son. The poem below depicts Mary’s awareness that her understanding of what has happened to her will be an unpredictable unfolding.
The Husbandry of God
(Luke 1:26-35)
How can I contain this word from the Lord?
His light has pierced my being
And sown in single seed
Both glory and shame.
Content was I
To wed in lowliness
And live in obscurity,
With purity my only dower.
Now, ravished with power,
I flout the conventions of man
To incubate God.
In lowliness how shall I bear it?
In modesty how shall I tell it?
What now shall I become?
But the fruit of God's planting
Is His to harvest.
No gleaner I, like Ruth,
But the field itself,
In whom my Lord lies hid.
“What now shall I become?” she asks, and realizes that, like the embryo in her womb, the purposes of God are developing. When the baby is born and the shepherds make their surprise visit, Mary “pondered” the meaning of the message they brought (Luke 2:19). She must also have pondered the cryptic words of Simeon in the Temple when Mary and Joseph brought the baby to be dedicated to the Lord: that in addition to being “appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel,” that also “a sword will pierce through your [Mary’s] own soul” (Luke 2:33-35). When Mary said, “Let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), she was letting herself in for more than she realized. Those of us who have walked with the Lord for a while recognize that He often takes what seems submission to his will for a specific time and expands it into a much longer period of the development of His purposes.
This sense of God’s ends being incipient in His beginnings is brought out beautifully and profoundly in the first 18 verses of John 1. I have endeavored to create below a poetic digest of these verses.
“The Alpha/Omega Word”
(John 1:1-18)
Beginning Word
Spoke Light to Chaos;
Light pushed Life from sod,
And God through Word
Made forms to walk on sod,
And finally man to trod
On finished earth.
But darkness pierced
The perfect pearl of Paradise:
The Word no longer heard,
Nor known the fellowship with Light.
In darkness, tyrannous Time was lord,
But Time was also womb of Light renewed.
Word of Light
Re-entered world He made,
Took on a mortal mould1
That showed the face of God,
Undimmed by shade.
Heralded by John He came,
Following in flesh
But eternally before;
Jordan-witnessed Lamb of God,
Light to be extinguished
So that Light could shine once more.
Time redeemed
Became a womb again:
Spirit spawned
Brothers of the Son,
Children owing naught to fallen flesh,
But reborn through God-in-Flesh,
The Light of Life.
New Covenant of Life,
Bought with blood,
Became God’s family,
Receiving grace and truth
Transcending Law of Death.
New breath breathed in
Through timeless Word,
Beginning and also end.
1 “Mould” is the British spelling of “mold,” with
the old meaning of “earth” (decaying material).
In this poem, we see encapsulated the maturing of God’s eternal purpose in cycles of renewal: Word creating flesh finally becoming flesh to redeem fallen flesh; Light dimmed by darkness, but Light piercing darkness; the tyranny of time and death reversed by Incarnate eternality; fallen flesh becoming like the Son of God, recreated in the image of the Word Himself.
Praise in this season for our wondrous God, not only as the Alpha born of Mary, but as the Omega still working out His purposes in us and in the world.
Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)
