As Christmas Day approaches, rather than trying to say something myself that hasn’t already been said hundreds of times, I offer instead insights from three poets: two mediaeval and one modern.

The first is an extract from ‘In the Holy Nativity of our Lord’ by Richard Crashaw (1613 -1649): “Welcome, all wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span, Summer in winter, day in night, Heaven in earth, and God in man! Great little One, whose all-embracing birth, Lifts earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to earth.”

‘Eternity shut in a span’ (a hands-breadth). What an incredible thought – a tiny babe holding the very nature of God. That we find it incredible I suppose shows how little we understand of the relationship of the spiritual aspect of the universe to the physical, the eternal to the temporal.

The next extract is from ‘New Heaven, New War’, by Robert Southwell (1565-1591): “This little babe, so few days old, Is come to rifle Satan’s fold; All hell doth at his presence quake. Though he himself for cold do shake, For in this weak unarmèd wise, The gates of hell he will surprise.”

This emphasises the purpose of God becoming manifest in humanity: it is the mysterious focal point of his purpose to destroy all that oppresses, and ultimately to bring all things into harmony with him.

The final extract is from ‘Preludes’, by T S Eliot, (1888-1965): “And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes, Assured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street, Impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curled, Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle, Infinitely suffering thing.”

Some ‘infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing’ is a very surprising description of God. Yet the style of Jesus’s birth, his ministry, and the culmination of his mission being to suffer on a cross all suggest that this captures more of the nature of God than the ‘sky-fairy’ description mocked by atheists.

‘Suffering’ also has the sense of ‘allowing’ – God allowing the universe freedom to create itself, and us freedom to repudiate him, much to his grief.

Yet, we can be encouraged that this suffering God, come among us in weakness at Christmas time, has defeated the worst evil could do, and is leading all creation to glory.