G. K. Chesterton's "The House of Christmas"

G. K. Chesterton was always ready with imagery and paradoxes. Here is a Christmas poem contrasting being at home and away.

There fared a mother driven forth

Out of an inn to roam;

In the place where she was homeless

All men are at home.

The crazy stable close at hand,

With shaking timber and shifting sand,

Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,

And strangers under the sun,

And they lay their heads in a foreign land

Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,

And chance and honor and high surprise,

But our homes are under miraculous skies

Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,

Where the beasts feed and foam,

Only where He was homeless

Are you and I at home;

We have hands that fashion and heads that know,

But our hearts we lost – how long ago!

In a place no chart nor ship can show

Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,

And strange the plain things are,

The earth is enough and the air is enough

For our wonder and our war;

But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings

And our peace is put in impossible things

Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings

Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening

Home shall men come,

To an older place than Eden

And a taller town than Rome.

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless

And all men are at home.

Again, with words...

Again, I have found something in social media that I’d like to share. It’s attributed to Carl Sagan, but I cannot find the appropriate citation. Regardless, I truly appreciate the sentiment.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time…”

This is especially true of the Scriptures. Written ages ago by those no longer with us, they are the product of the God Who loves and cares for us. They bind us to Him by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, and through Him to one another and all the faithful of all time. Is it truly any wonder that the apostle John refers to Christ Jesus as “the Word”?

2 Timothy 3: 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

What our words reveal

“Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk, your mind is on parade.”

Samuel Johnson

The coarsening of discourse (angry rhetoric, snarkyness, profanity, etc.), or what might cause my Texan relatives to ask, “are you bein’ ugly?”, lamentably reflects the mindset of this age. But instead of throwing up our hands or sinking to the level of “giving as good as we’re getting,” our Lord encourage us through St. Paul to” 5 Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” (Colossians 4:5-6).

This is certainly with a proclamation of the Gospel in mind. But I’d have to think it should guide all of our speaking, so that eventually we will have the standing before others to share the message of Christ Jesus, crucified, risen, and ascended for the forgiveness of all. That is the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5-11) which should always be on parade.