This is a poem I wrote many years ago to use as an insert in Christmas cards. Although a Christmas message may be “seasonal,” the “dawn of redeeming grace” is timeless and should be celebrated every day. So on this spring day let us lift our hearts to our Savior, and with the shepherds “hear tidings of great joy…look with them upon my Redeemer’s face, and in Him account myself delivered from sin…embrace Him with undying faith, exulting that He is mine and I am His. in Him Thou hast given me so much that Heaven can give no more.” –‘The Gift of Gifts’ from The Valley of Vision.

When the start shone bright over Bethlehem

And weary heads turned to the sky,

Did wounded hearts quicken with unexplained joy?

Did they feel hope and wonder why?

The outcast, the captive, the cheerless, the cripple

Beheld the star, not knowing it shone

Above the manger where slept the One

Who had come to ransom them as His own.

One trapped in blindness from his birth

Saw not the star—living always in night.

Someday the One who illumined the star

Would give to his eyes the gift of sight.

A twisted cripple, pitied and scorned,

Lifted bowed head to gaze at the skies.

Someday the One Who stepped down to Earth

Would straighten bent limbs and say, “Arise.”  

And we, once blinded and crippled in sin,

Rejoice that the Light of the world was born.

He showed the way to escape the  dark

When we were lost, without hope, forlorn.

As we remember that night long ago

When over a manger a bright star shone,

Let us lift our hearts to our risen Savior,

Now seated forever by the Father’s throne.