CMP Review 2023-12-18

December 18, 2023

‘The Waits!

Slowly they play, poor careful souls,

With wistful thoughts of Christmas cheer,

Unwitting how their music rolls

Away the burden of the year.

And with the charm, the homely rune,

Our thoughts like childhood’s thoughts are given,

When all our pulses beat in tune

With all the stars of heaven.’

—John Davidson.

“Children necessary to Christmas Joy.— … it takes the presence of children to help us to realise the idea of the Eternal Child. The Dayspring is with the children, and we think their thoughts and are glad in their joy; and every [p 281] mother knows out of her own heart’s fulness what the Birth at Bethlehem means… The old, old story has all its first freshness as we tell it to the eager listeners; as we listen to it ourselves with their vivid interest it becomes as real and fresh to us as it is to them. Hard thoughts drop away like scales from our eyes; we are young once more with the children’s young life, which, we are mysteriously made aware, is the life eternal. What a mystery it is! Does not every mother, made wise unto salvation, who holds a babe in her arms, feel with tremulous awe that, that deep saying is true for her also, ‘The same is my mother’?” (Vol. 2, pp. 280–281)

@tessakeath