He came because he loves you.

This week I heard the poem “The Coming” by R.S. Thomas. It’s a good poem for Advent, as we wait for the Lord’s coming to earth.

The Coming

And God held in his hand

A small globe. Look he said.

The son looked. Far off,

As through water, he saw

A scorched land of fierce

Colour. The light burned

There; crusted buildings

Cast their shadows: a bright

Serpent, a river

Uncoiled itself, radiant

With slime.

On a bare

Hill a bare tree saddened

The sky. Many People

Held out their thin arms

To it, as though waiting

For a vanished April

To return to its crossed

Boughs. The son watched

Them. Let me go there, he said.

As in the stories of other globes, when the son in the poem looked at the small globe God held, he saw “as through water.” Some images I imagined:

• Pippin, Aragorn, and Gandalf looking into the Palantir in The Lord of the Rings

• Frodo looking into the mirror of Galadriel, also in The Lord of the Rings

• Harry Potter looking into the memory bowl, or Pensieve

• A gypsy looking into a crystal ball

As I’ve been reading and re-reading this poem, the beginning and ending lines especially stick in my mind. “And God held in his hand | A small globe. | Look he said | The son looked… | Let me go there, he said.”

It reminds me, too, of a scene in the beginning of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which I watch every year at some point during the holidays. (My family refuses to watch it with me any more, and the movie is often ridiculed. I know it’s cliche’ and sappy, but, despite it all, I still love it and it makes me cry.) In the beginning of that movie, some angels look at the world, and specifically George Bailey’s world, past and present. They watch George’s life up to that moment, at which point George is feeling life isn’t worth living. Clarence the angel, too, looks … and then wants to go there.

The poem portrays a beautiful image, doesn’t it? Jesus looks, sees the scorched land, the slimy serpent, the sad bare tree, the waiting people, and says, “Let me go there.” Why would he want to go to such a place? Because he loves us -- us the people, and all of creation. He loves you.

from the Selene Data Archive. https://darts.isas.jaxa.jp/planet/pdap/selene/