Musings Along Life's Way:

Dear Friends,

This Advent season I’ve kept company with the English poet, Christina Rossetti. Her poems have been famously set to music. She is the author of In the Bleak Midwinter and my new favorite Christmas hymn, Love Came Down at Christmas. Christina possesses an artist’s temperament and writes eloquently of soul’s longing and fulfillment, the low and high of life. In her words, we discover the essence of Advent longings and of Christmas’ promise fulfilled.

In 1892, Rossetti published a collection of poems, The Face of the Deep, as a commentary on the Book of Revelation. This collection included the poem, None Other Lamb, a meditation on the heart’s longing for God. The second verse of the poem goes,

My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart’s desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee.

Rossetti, indeed, dives deep where she finds her heart crying out, “by the deep thunder of its want and woe.” She is aware that that cry is directed towards none other than the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. She finds “none other hiding place,” “none other hope.” During the Advent season, it is our desire to step right into the glitter and joy of Christmas, our temptation is to embrace the promise without ever having asked the question. Rossetti reminds us that the human heart cries out to be made whole, that we are, as John of the Cross put it, great caverns of desire, caverns that only God can fill. Rossetti reminds us that it is natural for us to long for God.

She also reminds us that our longing hearts find fulfillment. Again, through the beauty of her words and images, Rossetti strikes a chord that lays hold of the other side of human experience, God’s love for humankind found in the birth of Jesus Christ.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.


Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.



She reminds us that love is God’s gift to us and that the love that “comes down at Christmas” is ours to use as we devote ourselves to God and in service to humanity. The love that “came down at Christmas” is the same love with which we embrace God and one another, friend and stranger. Our longings are met by this love as we are united to God and to one another in community. That is good news, the gospel truth.

I write this wishing you all the best in this season of longing (Advent) and fulfillment (Christmas).

Love, at Christmas,


David