‘Christmas by Force’: A Poem by Gigi Ryan

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Christmas by Force

The jostling beast increases the distress
Of Mary whose first labor has progressed.
Joseph of the donkey’s reins keeps hold;
The night is clear and calm, the desert cold.

In town each door rejects their urgent need,
Prophetic theme for this, the promised Seed.
Labor does not wait, it picks up pace
And so a barn becomes a birthing place.

Admitted to a stall and not a room;
Instead of bed and pillow, straw and gloom.
This maiden who has never known her man
Delivers into his unseasoned hands.

In agony with screams and desperate cries
The virgin writhes—all modesty aside—
And then at once her body rips in two.
(Or so it seemed as He came forcing through.)

Next Mary shakes with birthing aftershocks,
Observed by quiet doves and pigs and ox,
Who go unnoticed but for heat and smells
From their respective nests and stalls and cells.

Blood and water, both are everywhere—
On the hay and on the Baby fair.
She has no place to wash the blood and sweat;
The straw she lies upon is soaking wet.

She cares for him amidst manure and mess.
Her breast she gives the child with tenderness;
This sight of his beloved is a first,
And thus he weeps while Jesus sates his thirst.

As Mary gazes on her child before
Her, all her anguish turns to brightest joy.
Overwhelmed with awe and thankfulness,
She wraps her Savior in His swaddling dress.

Birth is not a glamorous event,
And often is more gory than is death.
It is a ripping into time and space;
When Jesus comes it ushers in sweet grace.

After three and thirty years He climbs
Golgotha’s hill for God’s appointed time
For Him to bear the world upon His back.
Like his mother, Jesus is not slack

To do the Father’s will, enduring shame
And agony to glorify His name.
Blood and water and indignities
Again are His upon the rugged tree.

His passage yet again brings untold force;
The veil, it rips in two by thunder’s voice.
Victory overcomes the great divide;
The Son through death, new peace with God provides.

And now we wait; once more the King will come
To gather in those blood-bought by His Son.
The Second Coming will take place by force;
And His will bow in Paradise restored.

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Gigi Ryan is a wife, mother, grandmother, and home educator. She lives in rural Tennessee.