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Steve has written a set of daily advent readings for the week of Christmas. You can download the book here.

THE GAZE
by Anne Heinrich

A member of the Impact Nations family has sent us this poem.

From heaven you came, bringing heaven with you
It’s Good News
It was audacious, stunning and life transforming 2,000 years ago
Your arrival though promised, expected, and longed for more than the dawn for a weary night watchman 
came with the exhalation of breath and the first cry of a baby
Tiny, fragile, dependent 
As in the beginning the world was in darkness and chaos
and the Spirit, the very breath of God hovered over the deep
speaking light into the darkness
After 400 years of excruciating silence with no word of the Lord heard in Israel
The silence was etched deep with disappointment,oppression, 
weariness and torment
The torment of the lack of a word more profoundly painful than the cruel dominion of Rome and the grinding poverty

How long? 
Oh God do you hear my cry?
Do you see me?
When will you fulfil your promise of deliverance?
Their 45 mile long nervous system was stretched to its painful limits
How long can my hope hold on?
Oh God, my God are you still here with me?
I need to hear you speak
I am weak, weary, abandoned, forgotten
hungry and thirsty 
Poor and persecuted 
pushed to the margins
despised and disowned
Who could have imagined that the long silence would be broken by a baby’s voice
The lowly shepherds, calloused and hardened by a tough life on the margins of society came first
Any journalist in any century would have given everything to join the shepherds
This wasn’t just the scoop of a lifetime
This, right here is the scoop of all scoops
But, you needed eyes to see it
a tender heart to believe it
and a transformed life to announce this Good News
The shepherds along with the early adopters 
fulfilled this simple criteria and became messengers
propelled by NEWS
which they knew in the depths of their being was GOOD
VERY GOOD
It was changing their lives, they were getting used to different
and this they knew, people must know!
Each of them had their mindset blown
Their cherished expectations reconfigured 
The New Dawn was seeping across their horizon 
their limiting beliefs where blown wide open 
on the hinge of this One, who is the Door
Overtaking their realisation was the discovery 
that every promise and prophecy of Torah
weaves their story into the big story
all fulfilled in Jesus, the KING
Each one was blessed as Jesus promised
In His hands that would all too soon be stretched wide and nailed to a Roman cross
He held the head of each who came to Him
The poor, the thirsty, the maimed and downtrodden
And lifted their downcast spirits
inviting them to gaze on Him
To hold His gaze 
And there to see in His eyes 
His love and creative joy cascading down through the centuries of brokenness and despair from before the beginning of time
In that look, in that gaze time would stand still 
Eternity would break in
and more would happen in those breathtaking moments than words can adequately express….
And so in response many sang a song  of deliverance, of freedom experienced
Some danced, especially those who had been lame
Those who had been deaf, more attentive now than most to birdsong, kind words, laughter, a solitary leaf falling to the ground in autumn
Oh, and let me tell you about those born blind!!
They astonished everyone
They could see more than many with eyes to see
and when they gained their physical sight, did they ever have a head start in this kingdom Jesus had brought
Walking by faith seemed to come so readily for them.
Those healed became healers of others
Can the cry of a small, vulnerable baby awaken our hearts today
The miracle of the Incarnation remains true today
God became a human being
and is still a human being
In full solidarity with our inner world and external circumstances
I willingly invite Jesus to lift my head in His nail-pierced hands 
To raise my gaze again and again
To drink in life and light,
truth, goodness, and beauty
You may feel overwhelmed and lost in this Gaze
The paradoxical and wondrous truth is this
You are not lost in this gaze
Rather you are more found than ever, alive to the unique beauty of yourself.
Made in His image and likeness 
we are able to both receive love from Him and give love to Him