You know our pain.
Stubbornness and grief!
this mud has smeared Your glory.

We groan,
as the daughter-mother groaned to push the Son of God from her body,
into the sludge of afterbirth and stable-dust.
We wait,
as creation waits heavy with the prophesied untenable, carrying agony
in a dust-sifting of already and not-yet.
We watch,
as a midwife watches to spy the crown that portends a final release
into the earth-bed of Lambs and Lions.

You keep Your promise.
O Creator and Savior!
this mud will bear Garden-fruit.