Advent Coming

Yesterday I wrote that Advent is about waiting in silence. It is also about 'coming'. What or who is coming? And will we recognize the One who arrives in ways we didn't expect during this Advent season?

I love Rowan William's poem on this theme, which I quote in full below:

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

© Rowan Williams

Published in 'The Poems of Rowan Williams' (Oxford 2002 and Grand Rapids MI 2004)

Image Credit: Photoholic  on Flickr, CC License