unfinished1

Each Advent season I try to offer some of the more beautiful poetry that has come to us through the ages. This year brings a lovely Advent song written by a friend, Greg Thompson, Sr. Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, VA. Included are Greg’s introductory remarks…

“In case you’re not familiar, Advent is a season in which Christians remember that the world–for all of its beauty–is still dark with sorrow and that we need God to come and “be our light.” It is a beautiful season, but a mournful one too–a season of darkness. In time it gives way to Christmas, the season in which Christians celebrate that God has come and will come again–a season of light.

Forgive the theology lesson. I simply tell you this because it accounts for the song. The grief in it, and also the hope.”

Come

Kindle the flint, the tinder
Liven the hearth, the stone
Shelter the dying lantern light
Gladden the shadowed home
Into this wilderness of shadows
Come, Light Original

Answer our famine yearning
Nourish our blighted fields
Raise all our fallen storehouses
Leaven the bitter yield
Into this emptiness, this hunger
Come, Bread All Bountiful

Out of the blowing starlessness
Over the frozen sea
Into our barren midnight
Up from our fruitless trees
Oh come

Loosen the cloaks of journeymen
Mend all the broken roads
Wake us from fitful forest sleep
Lighten the lonely load
Into this pilgrimage, this journey
Come, Home Perpetual

Come Light
Come Bread
Come Home
Come

wgt.2011