A Wise Man’s Wonderings – Writing Christmas Poetry, by Georgie Tennant

In case you hadn’t noticed, Christmas is almost upon us. For me, as well as putting the poor postman through his paces, delivering, daily, the raft of gifts I’ve ordered for people online (much easier than fighting through the high street crowds), it means having a go at creating a poem for our church’s carol service.

People often ask how my poems come about. For me, it can be a variety of ways. Sometimes I have a theme, a “commission,” if you like, and I brainstorm ideas and craft from there. Sometimes, they come about from a phrase – a kind of flash of inspiration that won’t go away and keeps reverberating in my head. It was interesting, at the British Christian Writers’ Conference in September, to hear the amazing poet Jude Simpson talk in similar ways about how her poems come about – do give her a follow on social media. She’s brilliant. One particular favourite from the day was how she had seen a sign at a pet shop that said “for all your reptile needs,” which inspired some hilarious verse.

In the case of the poem below, I had a bit of a riff reverberating in my head along the lines of “don’t be so ridiculous, don’t be so absurd…God coming as a baby, who couldn’t say a word,” and then linking it in with Jesus being the word became flesh. I played around with that for a while, Jude’s advice about performance poetry and rhyme resounding in my head, and found it trickier than I’d anticipated to find rhymes for absurd. The central concept is the idea that most people might have had certain assumptions about a coming king which  didn’t line up at all with how Jesus actually arrived.

A Wise Man’s Wonderings

Hearsay is whispered through the Roman world:

reports that demand to be heard:

news of a baby, stable-born,

amid speculations absurd.

Fantastical, outrageous claims,

rumours flamed and stirred -

of hosts on high and a star in the sky,

and shepherds towards him spurred.

Some claim he’s the promised Messiah.

Could anything be more absurd?

Surely he’d come, striking everyone dumb,

not as a baby who can’t say a word?

He’d come with a fanfare from heaven:

the world would know what had occurred.

Not as a child, swaddled and mild,

who can’t even utter a word.

He’d instantly oust Roman tyrants,

the power to his kingdom transferred.

he wouldn’t sleep, surrounded by sheep:

an infant who can’t say a word.

But following the star to the stable

the boundaries begin to feel blurred,

between heaven and earth by the fact of this birth,

my heart inexplicably stirred.

And kneeling in the straw of his birthplace,

offering my strange gift of myrrh,

reason and heart start pulling apart,

and the rumours don’t seem so absurd.

The God, who flung planets and stars into space,

descended to this one, unheard.

Seeing the lost, he counted the cost;

to his Father’s will he deferred.

To the helpless and hopeless and needy he came,

not to those on whom honour’s conferred

not in great power, all done in an hour - 

but as a baby who couldn’t say a word.

Here in the flickering lamp light,

the facts seem both true and absurd:

the Messiah is born in a stable this morn,

clothed in flesh, God’s living Word.

Georgie Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive. She is married, with two sons, aged 15 and 12 who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW ‘Christian Writer’ magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published ‘New Life: Reflections for Lent,’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone.' She has written 8 books in a phonics series, published by BookLife and was a freelance writer for King's Lynn Magazine for a while. She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk. Her first devotional book, "The God Who Sees You," was published by Kevin Mayhew in March. https://www.kevinmayhew.com/products/the-god-who-sees-you