The Child-Bearing

THE CHILD BEARING

‘Saved– by the Child-bearing’
Or so St. Paul once said.
Not ‘saved by baby-making’,
That’s how that text’s misread.

Not ‘kept safe through childbearing’
For that’s not always true.
Many a faithful godly woman
Have died in labor too.

Mary is the Christmas Eve
Obedient, well-rehearsed
The blessing of her new born Son
Would see the curse reversed.

What was the curse on Eve you say?
Desire, male domination.
But Mary conceived without male help
And Eve’s subordination.

Jesus did not come to us
To baptize ‘what men know’
He did not come to reinforce
A patriarch’s status quo.

He came to set the world on fire
And turn it upside down,
The least, the last the lost,
Are most, and first, and found.

In Him there is no Jew or Greek
No slave or free, thank God
In Him no male and female,
None superior, and none are odd.

If anyone is in Christ
There is a new creation
Christmas began a whole new world
By means of Incarnation.

Dec. 3, 2016