The Child at the Centre of the World’s Oldest Poetry
What Advent can teach us about Scripture’s creativity, and God’s new beginning.
Welcome to today’s Advent reflection, exploring how Scripture’s poetry prepares us for the child who changes everything.
Advent always reminds me of the prophets. Not because they offer easy predictions or neat timelines, but because they give us something far more powerful — poetry.
Isaiah, in particular, refuses to speak in tidy prose. He sings. He paints. He stretches the imagination to breaking point. He gives us wolves lying with lambs, deserts blooming, a people walking in darkness who suddenly feel light breaking on their faces. You can’t read Isaiah without sensing that words are straining to describe a reality too large and captivating for literal language.
And it’s that poetry, that wild, hope-drenched vision, that made me think again about just how diverse Scripture really is.
When we open the Bible, we aren’t stepping into a single genre. We’re entering a library. Stories, songs, laments, genealogies, parables, parodies, prophecy, letters, law codes, and, somewhat randomly, a talking donkey. It’s an astonishing range, and Advent highlights something important about it: God invites us to discover Him through creativity. Some find Him in story, others in wisdom, others in the bold edge of prophecy or the steady beauty of poetry. He keeps opening new ways for us to see, understand, and imagine Him.