Reading Andrew Roycroft on Christmas Eve

Here is a utterly fabulous example of modern Christian poetry—and one totally appropriate for Christmas Eve—in this case the story of Gabriel’s visit to Zechariah.

It was recently written by Pastor Andrew Roycroft of Portadown Baptist Church in Northern Ireland for an New Irish Arts Ireland in Christmas Praise night:

Entry Point
Were time and space heavy on Gabriel’s limbs -
    a sickness of plunged altitude, slow hours
         out of infinite - as he entered earth’s
 small vault, stooping further still under jambs
         of the low-ceilinged temple, miniature
         insubstantial shadow, atom of heaven?

       And there at ease in the fraught holiness
that made hearts tremble, did he meet, with wonder,
              a great miracle to an angel mind:
    that men, beholding glory, were still blind?