Daughters Of Jerusalem Poem by Dann Thomas

In a small crowded room filled with hay
Surrounded by donkeys, sheep and cows.
Troubled and afraid the mid wife knelt to pray
Accompanied by a couple of cooing doves.
While the expectant mother in a dark corner lay.

The young woman mourns in pain and fright
The animals shift undecidedly at her cries.
Zebedee's wife prays for just a little more light.
Troubled and helpless, shaking her head she sighs,
'I wonder what would happen this gloomy night'

Then a scream of light through roof tiles pour.
Strange, loud and brilliant beams of sun.
In awe she watches this beauty in labour,
Crying in relieved happiness for her son.
Clothed in light, the night with starlight tore.

Thirty years hence she watches that child afore
Drawn out between two thieves, hung out on nails,
Painted in pain and blood and shame and gore.
She weeped as his mother, for her own John and James.
That day clothed in darkness, Jerusalem's curtain tore.

She witnessed,
Two births but of one from different scenes-
One as a woman's child, the other God's Son.
The heavens revealed the power He wields
Over birth and death, but for us hope was born
When day turned to night, and night the day reveals.