In preparing for a week of prayer at the church, I came across this poem. It is one that I have read before and it touches me each time with an awareness of Jesus’s incredible love for our fallen world.
The Coming
R. S. Thomas, Wales, 1913 –.
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said,
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
R. Atwan, G. Dardess, P. Rosenthal, (eds) Divine Inspiration The Life of Jesus in World Poetry, Oxford University Press, 1998 , p. 7
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