God With Us

With Us Is God

O come, O come, and be our God-with-us,

O long-sought with-ness for a world without,

O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.

Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name,

Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,

O quickened little wick so tightly curled,

Be folded with us into time and place,

Unfold for us the mystery of grace

And make a womb of all this wounded world.

O heart of heaven beating in the earth,

O tiny hope within our hopelessness,

Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,

To touch a dying world with new-made hands

And make these rags of time our swaddling bands

by Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

The Nativity by Gari Melchers (1891)