(YOU HEAR) THEIR CRY*.....

Some thoughts on the human cry of God's people, to which Christmas (like the Passover before it) seems (to me) to be a key part of God's response: 
Isaiah 63 & 64  etc

..that you would TEAR THE HEAVENS OPEN and ^a
then enter into life in this old world!
From outside in, and inside out, you’d stand.
Your flag could scarce be SECRETLY unfurled!

The nations - tremble; mountains - they would quake;
your deeds so awesome, beyond wildest dreams,
your touch on Earth would surely make it shake,
the sea might part - to tiny little streams…

else change it’s nature just to let you walk
right over it, as once you brooded long,
to bring from it the life on earth we talk
of, which too came to sky, & sea, & song!



..that you would TEAR THE HEAVENS OPEN and ^b
come down & enter human life down here!
Then you’d take heaven into woman/man
and it would be amongst us - oh we'd cheer!

So not just as a human avatar;
for you’d make holy woman's womb from which
our every child, that’s ever come that far,
has come this way, you'd be our star to hitch…

If you then grew, a boy, how good would that
be (if you had to grow in wisdom too),
and handle all the troubles (where we spat
the dummy) as your hormones/body grew.

And if you had to see the “unfair” things
as happens in those countries occupied:
the fathers killed because corruption brings..
and widows raising children as they cried..

And if you lived a man in Palestine
and saw God's people loving money more
than he who sourced all love before all time,
& too reflections of him - each neighbour.
 
And if you had to choose (as we do now)
between those bureaucratic beastly rules
and God's Will (that might cost our life somehow),
when everyone thought that was just for fools,

then though the heavens might be torn apart
we'd see more closely who our father was
and something might respond from our cold heart
to once again beat with a “love-because”...


..that you would TEAR THE HEAVENS OPEN and ^c
come down, & rest both ‘on’ and ‘in’ a man,
and then remain, abide, and help him stand
& live, & speak, the truth as well he can..

Your life within can’t help but then bear fruit
and show the image, likeness of the God
who loves and acts, and sides with his, in truth,
and goes ahead, where all his children trod.

So you would suffer, where obedience led
(or is it where your love would share?) the part
of your children when they are left for dead.
Your “lifting up” of him is quite an art!


..that you would TEAR THE HEAVENS OPEN and ^d
when both that Man and God sent you right back,
You, Holy Spirit came to Earth AGAIN
to “act out” like Yeshua down the track,

so thus to suffer inside woman/man
to still obey the father who has sent
us all to Earth to bear the fruit we can,
grow up to what “maturity” has meant.

That builder said he’d build “Ek-les-i-a”
(his own), and raise a temple where God dwelt
with living stones (“cells”, we’d call them here)
your Spirit in a body, that has knelt…

at the feet of God, but also blind men
by picking up their firewood, med’cine, food…
& speaking out the Truth of Love again,
when everyone ‘in power’ thinks that’s rude!


..that you would TEAR THE HEAVENS OPEN and ^e
then send us our Messiah to lead us,
a leader who would lead us as you planned.
Our “Maranatha” cry, “Lord Come! - Jesus”

* Exodus 3:7-8 ⁷ Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, …; 2 Samuel 22:7 In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I called. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry came to his ears; Nehemiah 9:9 “And you saw the distress of our ancestors in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea; Job 34:28 so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to him, and he heard the cry of the afflicted—; Psalm 18:6 In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears; Psalm 40:1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry; Psalm 106:44 Nevertheless he regarded their distress when he heard their cry; Lamentations 3:56 you heard my plea, “Do not close your ear to my cry for help, but give me relief!”; (& from Jewish writings before Jesus’s day that his family probably read: Susanna 1:44 The Lord heard her cry

^a Isaiah 63 & 64
^b Mat 1;  Luk 1-3; 
^c  Mk 1:9-15;
^d Acts 1:1-14;  Acts 2:1-4, 14-41;
^e 1 Cor 16:22;  Rev 22:20