GLEANINGS

Among God’s ancient chosen race

Who always tended to rebel

One came to show the heart of God,

Whose title is Emmanuel.

“God with us”, to express God’s love,

To show His constant will to bless,

To bring a humbled nation back

And to fulfil all righteousness.

The poor in spirit were His care,

Hungerers, those who mourned, the meek,

And all whom human pride despised;

Such were the ones He came to seek.

He listened to His Father’s voice

Each morning from the time He woke,

And His disciples came to know

The Father of whose grace He spoke.

The children God had given Him,

Under His word and touch, began

To grow in grace and thus display

The features of the heavenly Man.

He praised His Father that though He

Was One the nation might despise

The Father had revealed to babes

What had been hidden from the wise.

If Israel despised His rights

And thus blasphemed the Father too

The Gentiles were embraced to share

In concepts which were wholly new.

For He was minded to secure,

To His great cost, the entity,

Unnamed as yet to men, which would

Delight Him to eternity.

But Who was this who in His grace

Among the needy humbly trod?

The Father sovereignly revealed

It was the Christ, the Son of God.

Into a world of sins and ills

One who was God in Person came,

And His assembly can be built

On the confession of His Name.

Yet if that joy for Christ and God

Will merge as a celestial whole,

It meant His suffering and death,

It meant the anguish of His soul.

Those who are faithful to His name

Through this can be victorious

As conscious of the present love

Of Him who came as “God with us”.