Advent Sonnets: Hope

Week 1 of a Poetry Series

Welcome to the first of four posts in a series of Advent poems! I have the pleasure and honor of teaming up with my friend Zane Paxton to deeply reflect on the coming of our Lord through language and form. These sonnets were produced in hopes that they would lead you into a loving remembrance of Christ’s first arrival and that God would, in George Herbert’s words, “Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou mayst have / A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.” ¹

Please enjoy these poems written for week one of Advent on Hope.

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Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds by Govert Flinck (1615-1660)

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Elpis: From the Perspective of an Intertestamental Jew

An Acrostic Sonnet by Noah Bartley

How long, O Lord? How long before you come?
Omnipotent and kind one, speak to me!
Perhaps the tongue that once spoke hope is dumb,
Eternity now mute in history.
Isaiah wrote of one to come whose pain
Subverts our very own; whose power’s shown
Primarily through suffering; whose reign
Remains upon King David’s righteous throne.
O Yahweh Adonai, where is this King? 
Malignant rulers rise to snuff what hope
Invades their land before they feel death’s sting;
Suppressive darkness makes us blindly grope.
Each day we’ll trust Your word with hearts undrawn,
Defying silence — dark before the Dawn. 

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Advent I

by Zane Paxton

Our world, un-held, no form and void and dark. 
   Oh God, in grace do grant and give this day
   To place a light and cast the bane away. 
Please ring us singing; save with Holy Spark. 

Come carry us in cradle-birth, Oh Ark!
   Soon send your Son, our Savior, still to stay
   His great humility to make our way
To rise through Him and reign, we pray, we hark.

For He shall come again in trumpet sound 
   And make ourselves a home on Zion's slope.
Then we will join in holy triumph, found
   In God, our Man, who saved with cosmic scope. 
Yet, now we wait and wait and wait around
   While we rejoice to see our Lord of Hope. 






    

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These poems were generated by the author’s human minds with zero AI / LLM involvement.

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1. George Herbert, Christmas (I)