A Christmas hymn for Good Friday

While reading John's Passion narrative, my iPod shuffled over to a favorite hymn which we generally use for Christmas. The juxtaposition was jarring in all the right ways. Think of Christ on the cross and then consider:

Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be
He is Alpha and Omega
He the source, the ending He
Of the things that are,
That have been
Ant that future year shall see
Evermore and evermore.

Then consider Mary standing with John, remembering as she sees her son in his agony:

O, that birth forever blessed
When the virgin full of grace
By the holy ghost conceiving
Bore the Savior of our race
And that babe, the world's redeemer
First revealed His sacred face
Evermore and evermore

1-24-09

I saw a great egret today; it circled down to the creek, as unexpected as grace and just as striking.

1-22-09

God spoke the world into being—well, I agree but I can't get my mind around it, so the knowledge does me no good, I have to start smaller: the streetlamp, then, God is responsible for that.

1-18-09

I hear the pines creak in the wind, and the sound is comforting: like a screen door swinging in a breeze, sagging and settled into its old age; or like a rocking chair, swaying easily in a draft.

1-17-09

The sparrow fairly well transfigures: it sublimates before my eyes, an explosion from serenity to pure being.