“. . . For Who Can Endure the Day of His Coming?”

This is a poem by Luci Shaw. Enjoy!

“. . . For Who Can Endure the Day of His Coming?” Malachi 3:2

When an Angel

snapped the old thin threads of speech

with an untimely birth

announcement, slit

the seemly cloth of an even

more blessed event with the

shears of miracle,

invaded the privacy of a dream,

multiplied

to ravage the dark silk of the sky, the

innocent ears

with swords of sound: news in a new dimension demanded

qualification.

The righteous were as vulnerable as others.

they trembled for those strong

antecedent fear nots, whether goat-

herds, virgins, workers in wood or

holy barren priests.

In our nights our

complicated modern dreams rarely

flower into visions. No

contemporary Gabriel

dumbfounds our worship, or burning,

visits our bedrooms. No

sign-post satellite hauls us, earth-bound but

star-struck, half

around the world with hope.

Are our sensibilities

too blunt to be assaulted

with spatial power-plays and far-out

proclamations of peace? Sterile,

skeptics, yet we may be broken

to his slow silent birth

(new-torn, new-

born ourselves at his

beginning new in us).

His bigness may still burst

out self-containment

to tell us—without angels’ mouths—

fear not.

God knows we need to hear it, now

when he may shatter

with his most shocking coming

this proud cracked place

and more if, for longer waiting,

he does not.

-Luci Shaw