I have struggled to find words that are appropriate for the grandeur and mystery of Christmas.  In truth, I do not feel up to the task.  Anything I can think of seems to fall short.   As I was thinking about words appropriate to describe the glory and majesty that the Angels proclaimed,   I remembered a favorite poem.  The power in this poem is not in its description of glory.  The power is in humbleness.

Let the stable still astonish

Let the stable still astonish:

straw, dirt floor, dull eyes,

dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;

Crumbling, crooked walls;

no bed to carry that pain,

and then the child,

rag-wrapped, laid to cry in a trough.

 

Who would have chosen this?

Who would have said: “Yes, let the God of all the heavens and earth

be born here, in this place”?

 

Who but the same God

who stands in the darker, fouler rooms

of our hearts

and says, “Yes,

let the God of Heaven and Earth be born here –

in this place”.

Leslie Leyland Fields