Delivery Suite

Delivery Suite

 

The room is all set:

The forceps of foresight
The Hot water of Baptism
The towels of servanthood
The gas and air of joy in obedience,
Are all ready to go,

The Father is stood by, waiting to cut the chord,

The Angels draw the curtains of certainty
Around the Holy family
As the registrar of births'
Waiting in the wings
What transpires, mystery
His story will only record

That the deliverer
Has been delivered

Save the chosen few,
No one heard the screams
No one saw the blood
No one held their breath
In anticipation of the shrill, almost angry
Defiant yell of existence
And the relief, it bought with it,

The silent night
Was split,
Christ, the saviour, is born,

The deliverer has been delivered.

Reflection: Deliverance

I remember well the birth of my first son, Ethan. The second time around, it was not quite such a shock, but the first time you go into it, your learning curve is rapidly accelerating and on overdrive. I'd heard terms for instruments such as 'forceps' before, but not seen them with my eyes' I don't think, and certainly not seen them in use! 

And in this strange new world of medical terminology opening up before me, I, as a poet, was rather intrigued by the use of the term for the place where the birth would take place: The Delivery Suite. A place where all the needs of any delivery can be met, from the straight forward to the complicated.

As I wrote this, I imagined not the stable, but a heavenly delivery suite, where there was a sort of parallel spiritual birth taking place. The holy Family being the Trinity. The Registrar of Births being the angel who keeps records in the Lamb's book of life. The Angels almost as midwives around the miraculous event.

And this delivery is not really the work of one night, but of Jesus lifetime on earth. So we can include the water of his baptism and the towels of his servanthood as elements in such a spiritual delivery. That Christ coming to the point of his sacrificial death and his resurrection was the delivery of this deliverer.

I liked the play on the word deliverance/delivery. The dictionary has deliverance as The act of  being rescued or set free and it has deliverer as Someone who rescues, saves or sets something (or someone) free.

And as the baby, Jesus, was delivered from  the body of Mary, and all the danger that potentially bought with it, so Jesus has delivered us from the the body of sin and death.

~Scripture~

and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written: “The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.

~Romans 11:26~

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

~Matthew 1:21~