These Are My JOTtings, Part #2

New Year's Hope

New Year's Hope of Israel's Day
comes as Yom Kippur has blest.
"All's Complete!" let us say,
"Come, Messiah, o'er this test."

When was Jesus really born?
In cold to freeze or warmer days?
Was He the Lamb so roughly shorn
to cover Sin as Scripture says?

The Virgin travels through the sky.
The Lion safely, neatly borne
to come for Man's long furtive cry
as bearing Sin his spirit's worn.

Could this of truth be when he came?
Did August share This Loaf of Bread?
And in September bore He blame,
that New Year's Hope would rise from the dead?

No human heart can know this truth,
except the human, Christ, the Lord,
Who labored unknown in His Youth,
secured and hidden, God's Lone Word.

So sing we Christmas music, now,
and hie we oft the Garden Tomb.
Before the manger ever bow,
and make each heart His living room.

We'd miss His Birth, if for a day
we stop the celebration grand,
and New Year's Hope would not display,
if the Empty Tomb, we treat as bland.

For Christmas and the Rising Morn
must ever live in Christian hearts.
He split the matrix and was born
to give each longing soul a new start.

The New Year's not a Hope at all
without the tandem Days of Christ.
His Birth and Resurrection's Call
bespeaks the everlasting Price.

For One exists not without Both.
This Christmas needs the Risen Third,
that when the days of silent growth
were ended, Christ the distance blurred.

Now, hand-in-hand these two births, known.
The first one opened the virgin's womb,
and past the day of darkness shown
the second opened Death's laughing tomb.

For Christmas without Rising's naught,
and Rising without Christmas can't be.
Salvation on the Cross He bought,
the Empty Tomb shows the saved are free.

by Jay O’Toole
on September 9th, 2021