Shepherds' surprise

After Luke 2:8-20 

Dozing in deepening night,

pulling cloaks closer

in the cold darkness,

 

suddenly,

 

the light so bright,

the sound so deafening,

shook them awake, and

a voice saying fear not.

The wise men had seen

a star and followed;

the shepherds had seen

a light, and were blinded,

had heard a voice, deafening,

and shocked to hear

of a birth.

 

The voice was joined

by a chorus of voices,

voices singling glory.

Then silence, and

darkness again.

 

They looked at each other,

faces etched in wonder,

light shining into hearts.

 

They left everything,

 

their camp, their sheep,

their possessions, and

raced to find the manger,

to find the child. 

 

To the parents, they said:

we were told,

and we found the light.

 

Illustration by Kingdom Formation Ministries.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day - Casting Crowns (via Henry Wadswoth Longfellow)

The Story Behind the Hymn - Hymncharts

Some Thursday Readings

 

Peace Child – Andrew Wilson at Think Theology.

 

What Does Christmas Feel Like?  and Songs That Feel Like Christmas – Michael Farmer at Front Porch Republic.

 

A Leprechaun for Christmas – short story at Dancing Priest.

 

Those Who Lie in Unvisited Tombs – Brian Sudlow at The Imaginative Conservative on the genealogy of Jesus.

 

A Tennessee Christmas Remembered – Biran Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Another Ordinary, Holy Day – Andrea at A View of the Lake.

 

Adeste Fideles – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

On Christmas Night in the City (London) – Spitalfields Life.

 

Ghosts of Christmas Past – Bow of Odysseus.

 

An Irish Christmas Selection Box 2025 – Seth Lewis.

 

Imagine the day

After Zephaniah 3:14-20 

Imagine the day

when judgments are removed,

when enemies are cleared away.

 

Imagine the day

when evil is banished,

when the Lord is in your midst.

 

Imagine the day

when the Lord rejoices over you,

when the Lord sings over you.

 

Imagine the day

when exclusion is dead,

when no one suffers reproach.

 

Imagine the day

when the lame are healed,

when the outcasts are gathered,

when all shame is expelled,

when your fame is sung by the Lord.

 

The day is coming.

Soon.

 

Photograph by Jonny Gios via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Noel -- Tommee Profitt

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Don’t Miss Jesus – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Re-enchanting the World: The Mythic Power of Christmas – James Sale at The Epoch Times.

 

What is the Christian Holiday of Epiphany? – Dave Roos at History.

 

The First Christmas Tree – Alison Barnes at History Today.

 

Christmas with the Presidents – Jerry Newcombe at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

What’s the Matter with Ebenezer Scrooge? – Benjamin Myers at Front Porch Republic.

 

“The Oxen,” poem by Thomas Hardy – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Anonymous Poem That Made Stockings America’s Christmas Obsession – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

The messenger

After Malachi 3:1-4 

The messenger is coming,

sent by the Lord;

the messenger is sent

to prepare the way of the Lord

 

The messenger is coming,

in whom you delight;

the messenger of the covenant

is coming, says the Lord.

 

But who among us

can stand when he comes?

Who can endure the day

when he appears among us?

 

But he is coming;

the messenger is coming.

 

Photograph by Wonderlane via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

More than merely a magician with words – Michael Hurley at The Critic Magazine on a new biography of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

 

Inhabiting the wide world – Padraig O Tuama on the poetry of Marie Howe.

 

For shadowment: Villanelle for the solstice – Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at The Christian Century.

 

Christmas, Whidbey Island. 1975 – Kelley Keller at Story Warren.

 

Violet Bick Gives Back the Money – poem by Megan Willome.

The promise

After Jeremiah 33:10-16 

The Lord will fulfill

his promise, the one

made to the house

of Judah, to the house

of Israel. The Lord

will raise a branch,

a righteous branch,

a branch who will

bring justice, who will

bring righteousness,

to the land.

 

Judah will be saved.

Jerusalem will be

Secured.

 

And the branch 

will be called

the Lord is our righteousness.

 

This time will pass.

This time is not forever.

This will become 

what it is designed

to be, the design

of the branch

of righteousness.

 

Photograph by Osama Khan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Monday Readings

 

How God Used A Christmas Carol to Resurrect Literature in My Life – John Sommer at Story Warren.

 

Wonder Confronts Certainty, Then and Now – Gary Morson at Public Discourse.

 

The Real Christopher Lasch – Paul Baumann at Commonweal.

 

How the West Became Pagan –Again – Derek Rishmawy at The Gospel Coalition.

Well, I Guess It’s Christmas, men plow our roads, I remember Dad and Presents – Katie Andraskie at Katie’s Ground.

I am Mephibosheth

After 2 Samuel 9:1-13 

I am Mephibosheth,

citizen of a fallen house,

a hose condemned,

a house consumed

by its own anger

and wrath, destroyed

by its own hand.

 

I am Mephibosheth,

crippled since birth,

son of the man who

loved his friend, who

sacrificed his own

position and rank and

his father’s favor.

 

I am Mephibosheth,

expecting to be killed,

desiring to die, instead

finding myself elevated,

and blessed.

 

Photograph by Intricate Explorer via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Welcome – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“The House of Christmas,” poem by G. K. Chesterton – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

An Advent Reflection: The Ox – Elizabeth Sudlow at The Imaginative Conservative.

What King Would Come Like This? The Surprising Advent of Jesus – David Mathis at Desiring God.

The Great Disconnect: When the Pulpit and the Pew Aren’t Speaking the Same Language – Tripp Fuller and Ryan Burge at Process This.

Saturday Good Reads - Dec. 20, 2025

This week saw the 250^th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, and lots of people were writing lots of things about her, one even observing (correctly, I think) that she’s become a brand. One I found particularly interesting was, oddly enough, at The Gospel Coalition: “How a Christian Worldview Animates Jane Austen’s Fiction” by Deanna Rogers. 

One of the best-known, and best-loved, works by Dylan Thomas is A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Jeffrey Street ay the English Republic of Letters writes about how much of Christmas, as exemplified in the Dylan story, is about memory.

 

Charles Dickens, his career faltering, went out on a limb and spent money he didn’t really have to spend on a short novel in 1843. Jason Clark at This Is the Day explains how the work not only sold out in four days and revitalized Dickens’s career, but also transformed our understanding of Christmas.

 

Anthony Esolen at Word & Song has been explaining the origin and background of various Christmas hymns. This week, he looks at “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” by Edmund Sears.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Pessimism of James Madison – Mark Malvasi at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Robert Morris: Founding Father and Revolutionary Financier – Michael Aubrecht at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

The Deadliest Seconds of the War – Dougles Dorney Jr. at the Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Tea Rebellion: Boston’s Revolutionary Tax Revolt – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

The History of America Can Be Told Through Christmas Trees – Meghan Bartels at Scientific American.

 

The Evolution of the American Declaration of Independence – Jane Sinden Spiegel at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Poetry

 

“Noel,” poem by J.R.R. Tolkien – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Once Round the Moon – poem by David Whyte.

 

Smelling Salts – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

British Stuff

 

On ‘location’ – Annie Whitehead at Casting Light upon the Shadow.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Should Everyone Write? – Peter Biles at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Comfortless Suffering of King Lear – Luke Fong at Front Porch Republic.

 

Why History Matters – Elizabeth Stice at Mere Orthodoxy reviews History Matters by David McCullough.

 

Faith

 

The Scopes Trial at 100: Fact, Fiction, and the Christian Historian – Nathan Finn at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Marketing as Stewardship – Nick Aumiller at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Rising Tide of Islam – Alan Schlemon at Stand to Reason.

 

You Are in the Circumstances in Which You Can Best Serve—Tim Challies.

The Ghost of Christmas Never – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

Life and Culture

 

Our terror model is obsolete – Emma Schubart at The Critic Magazine.

 

News Media

 

How the Media Shape Our Thinking – Christopher Rufo. 

 

Holy Forever (Christmas Version) – Jessie Harris and Gateway Worship

 

Painting: Woman Reading at Window, oil on canvas (1893) by Anna Sahlsten (1859-1931). 

Called to the presence

After 2 Samuel 9:1-13 

Called to the presence 

of the king, expecting

to be killed as was

the custom, anticipating

his end to a life marked

by crippling lameness,

the fear in his heart

palpable, he’s instead

presented something

else, a promise

remembered, a friendship

honored, the son of his

friend lifted up, blessed,

not only in words but

with restoration of family

wealth, a picture of love,

divine love.

 

Photograph by William Krause via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

An Advent Reflection: Fuel – Elizabeth Sudlow at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Christmas in the Garden – Eric Geiger.

 

A Song for the Other Side of Christmas – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Midwinter Light at Christ Church – Spitalfields Life.

 

It Isn’t Night for the Moon – Seth Lewis.

 

“The Burning Babe,” poem by Robert Southwell – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Brett Foster and "Extravagant Rescues"

Brett Foster (1973-2015) was a professor of English at Wheaton College in suburban Chicago. He was a Renaissance scholar, anthology editor, and a poet. He had been Wheaton’s Poet in Residence since 2005. He was known for his work on William Shakespeare, John Donne, and Renaissance Rome. He had been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. 

He received his B.A. degrees in English and journalism from the University of Missouri, where he met his wife. And the man was born in Kansas. You have to be a native of Missouri or Kansas to know just how contrary it is for a Kansan to attend a college in Missouri, and vice versa. The enmity is a legacy of the pre-Civil War “bleeding Kansas” battles over slavey. He did receive his masters in English from Boston University and his Ph.D. from Yale.

 

At the time of his death, he had published one full poetry collection, The Garbage Eater (2011) and a chapbook, Fall Run Road (2011). He was working on a new collection, Extravagant Rescues, at the time of his death. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings 

 

Joy of My Youth – poem by Paul Mariani at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Winter Snow,” poem by Mark van Doren – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern. 

 

“Christmas,” poem by George Herbert – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Frost,” poem by Hannah Flagg Gould – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Five Poems in Honor of Thomas McGrath – Jared Carter at New Verse Review.

Funeral, 1895: A Brookhaven Poem

She nestles there, suffering,

folded into herself,

until she is not. Helpless,

I watch her, disappearing

a little each day, and then

in the deafening silence

I can hear someone 

screaming in the light.

 

Our daughters, so much

like her, guide me through

the motions – arrangements,

the pastor, the funeral home,

the service, the burial, words

read to the sound of dirt

striking wood, the single rose

someone left soon covered.

 

The rose is white

in the afternoon light.

 

At the house, after, the smell

of coffee and iced cakes, 

church ladies hovering 

in long skirts and starched

white collared blouses, 

pouring into cups and 

cutting slices as muted sounds

of voices pass around me.

Our daughters anchor me 

in line, one on each side,

smiling to the people

in soft, nodding gratitude.

Through the windows I see

the afternoon light.

 

People leave. Our daughters

insist I rest, laying me

in our bed, the place where

she left me. The door closes; I

hear their steps on the stairs.

I don’t sleep; I turn on my side

and reach to touch what

is now emptiness suffused 

with light.

 

It is morning, early, dark still.

I make my way to the kitchen

and then the street, its houses 

posing as tombstones. 

I walk in the dark to the woods,

our woods, the place we

remembered as the afterword

of war. I walk miles perhaps, but

by time the light opens, 

I am buried deep in the green 

and the smell of dense pine,

embracing the solitude 

of separation.

 

We were bonded forever

by the road after the war,

the road we traveled

together, two children 

grown too old too soon,

traveling as one in the light.

No one knew us like

we knew each other.

No one ever could,

except the light.

 

Years later, when I was old,

I would hear that grief

is a thing with feathers. 

I knew that was wrong.

I would know grief, yes,

but only as a thing with tethers,

tethers bathed in light.

 

Photograph by Dewang Gupta via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Origin Story of Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

Why Lenin Won – Gaul Saul Morson at Law & Liberty.

Paul Krause Follows in Dante's Footsteps

The world’s great poets not only wrote poetry still read and studied today, but they also helped shape the culture of their countries and indeed what we call Western civilization. Consider the greats of Greece and Rome – Homer, Virgil, Ovid and others. The great poets of English include Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Germany has its Goethe. Russia has Pushkin. And Italy has Dante. 

Many others belong to the category of “great poets,” of course, but as poet and author Paul Krause points out in his Dante’s Footsteps: Poems and Reflections of Poetry, it was poets and their works of poetry who led the way in language, culture, and ways of thinking and expression. 

 

One brief example cited by Krause: The word agape is well known in historic Christianity. It is the highest form of love. It is love that is selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional. The word come from the Greek, and it was Homer who first used it and perhaps invented it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

This Craft of Verse – Alexander Fayne.

 

Putting the Poetry Back into Homer – James Sale at The Epoch Times.

 

“Autumn,” poem by David Baird – Malcolm Guite.

 

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” (excerpt), poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Every Day Poems.

 

Horses Moving on the Snow – poem by David Whyte.

 

“Nativity,” poem by John Donne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“The Swansea Marina Murders” by Stephen Puleston

Detective Inspector Caren Waits of the West Wales Police Service and her team are called to the marina in Swansea. The body of a young woman has been found floating in the marina docking area; the post-mortem will show she’d been brutally strangled. Her identity is quickly determined: a university student who also worked at a marina pub. The site of her murder takes a bit longer to discover, and the crime scene investigators find it. 

The victim shared a flat with three other students, and everything seemed normal on the surface. That is, until the investigators find five thousand pounds in cash stowed in her room, a connection to a former boyfriend who tended to the violent, and an affair with one of her professors who doesn’t seem to be as forthcoming as he should about his own background. Complicating the case is that the victim’s phone is missing and presumably tossed into the marina waters.

 

Then a second murder happens; a friend of the first victim is found with her head bashed by a winch from a yacht. In this case, the victim’s small rooms are found ransacked; someone was looking for something and apparently didn’t find it. Waits and her team discover that there’s a possible connection to a spate of burglaries aboard marina boats and residences; someone had very good information when yacht owners would be sailing and away from home, or out of town and away from their boats.

 

Stephen Puleston

The Swansea Marina Murders is the third in the DI Caren Waits series by Welsh writer Stephen Puleston. It is a classic police procedural story, accented by Waits having to deal with the settling of the estate of her dead husband, the discovery that he had another relationship and child, and trying to raise her own young son with an almost impossible work schedule (parent to the rescue!). 

 

Puleston publishes three series of Welsh police detective stories. Detective Inspector Ian Drake is with the North Wales Police Service, Detective Inspector John Marco is with the South Wales Police Service, and now Detective Inspector Caren Waits is with the West Wales Police Service. The author originally trained and practiced as a; solicitor/lawyer. He also attended the University of London. He lives in Wales, very close to where his fictional heroes live and work.

 

Puleston has been setting the keyboard keys afire. This third DI Caren Waits novel is the third published in 2025, and a fourth one was recently issued. A fifth one is set to be published next year. Like its two predecessors, The Swansea Marina Murders is very methodically told; the focus is on police procedure. All three have been entertaining reads, and I’m looking forward to reading the fourth, The Pembroke Castle Murders.

 

Related:

 

The Paxton’s Tower Murders by Stephen Puleston.

 

The Tenby Harbour Murders by Stephen Puleston.

 

My review of Written in Blood.

 

My review of A Time to Kill.

 

My review of Another Good Killing.

 

My review of Brass in Pocket.

 

My review of Worse than Dead.

 

My review of Against the Tide.

 

My review of Devil’s Kitchen.

 

My review of Dead Smart.

 

My review of Speechless.

 

My review of A Cold Dark Heart.

 

My review of A Cold Dark Heart.

 

My review of Dead and Gone by Stephen Puleston.

 

My review of Time to Die by Stephen Puleston.

 

My review of Stone Cold Dead by Stephen Puleston.

 

My review of Looking Good Dead by Stephen Puleston.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

When a House Is Not a Home – Matthew Walther at Commonplace.

 

Why we love Jane Austen more than ever after 250 years – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors”: The Classic Christmas Opera – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.