nativity

It was not decent, that birth in the straw.
It did not smell of antiseptic, but dung.
No midwives to guide, just two rough, awkward hands.
Not the way to imagine your first son’s birth,
much less the birth of a God.
Another irony added to the tale;
one would think He delighted in them.
Yet how compassionate,
that in calling others to stoop low He asks them to go no lower than Himself.
A King for the people, among the people,
with the lips, and hands, and feet of a child.
Like the first Adam, greeted by the beasts at his first arrival,
But His destiny to release, not bind their chains of corruption.
Those groans of labor cried so that all the world might groan no more.

(from "the lay of the lord"  by chris yokel)