A Weary Place

Wartime Christmas

Led by a star, a golden star,
The youngest star, an olden star,
Here the kings and the shepherds are,
A-kneeling on the ground.
What did they come to the inn to see?
God in the highest, and this is He,
A baby asleep on His mother's knee
And with her kisses crowned.

Now is the earth a dreary place,
A troubled place, a weary place.
Peace has hidden her lovely face
And turned in tears away.
Yet the sun, through the war-cloud, sees
Babies asleep on their mother's knees.
While there are love and home--and these--
There shall be Christmas Day.

-by Alfred Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918

Kilmer once wrote, "At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier."
All the ugliness he witnesses on the battlefields of the First World War 
never shook his faith in God or his belief in the beauty and goodness of 
life. Kilmer was killed fighting in France in 1918.
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 Wars, politics, terrorists, hatred, abuse, injustice...
continue a hundred years later...

We who love and live for Jesus as our Savior wait for 
His victorious return. While we remain we live in 
His strength to do next things for Him even when 
the world is at its ugliest.
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