Advent 13 - Christmas Is Waiting

Christmas is waiting to happen.
Outside, a vacant hillside
lies silent, strangely empty
of any angel's choir.
A stable waits
for bookings at the inn to multiply.
Distant kings study charts
and keep gifts in cold storage,
while shepherds plan their memoirs
in expectancy of unexpected fame
and keep a chapter free for miracles.
A small velvet patch
in the black night sky
stands ready to hold a newborn star,
and oppressed people everywhere
cling wildly to a prophecy and a song
and whisper the word: Messiah.
They've switched on the lights
in Oxford Street,
counting off the buying days,
like guardsmen on parade,
shops are stocked and standing by,
revving up the engines
of their debt-powered swiping machines,
and history watchers mark another year
in the slow count to 3000.
But here an old man lies
in the stairwell where he fell three days ago
and no one knows.
Here a young girl loiters
in a streetlight's unholy halo
to sell the only thing she owns
that men will pay for.
And here an infant sleeps
on a sack on the hard earth floor
where even a mother's hand
is empty,
and there are places where Christmas
is still waiting
to happen.

Gerard Kelly,
Spoken Worship