wfn.org | "An Advent Night in Africa"

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17-December-1998 
98417 
 
    "An Advent Night in Africa" 
 
    by Gary Payton 
 
    "Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King." The familiar 
carol fills the night air with traditional sounds of Christmas. A 
well-trained English choir recorded, no doubt, in a lofty Gothic cathedral 
now plays on a boom-box on a quiet African night. The images that well up 
from the heart at the sound of the first carol of the season don't fit the 
Advent night around me. 
 
    African tree frogs sound on my evening walk home, the red earth of 
Zimbabwe clings to my shoes, sticky after the rains,  and crickets chirp 
outside my window as I pause at the end of the day. 
 
    "Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled." Just 
minutes before, a sky deep and giant  filled with towering thunderheads 
boiling  and blowing and flashing with light. 
Swirling gray against the blue black domes, thunder rolling from horizon to 
horizon! And then, the cooling rains that bring steam from the surface of 
the land. 
 
    Now the rains have passed and in their place is a sweetness that fills 
the air. Torch red flowers?  Renewed green grass? Or maybe the breath of 
Mother Earth sighing after the waters of rebirth. 
 
    "With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem." It is, 
of course, God's same earth. But on this night I wait from the South and 
not the North. I wait for the Prince of Peace. No wintry winds, no bundled 
coats, no burning fire. This night I wait with the tree frogs and the 
crickets and the rising steam. 
 
    He comes for all you know. "Neither Jew nor Greek," nor old or young, 
or black or white or brown or woman or man or gay or straight. He simply 
comes for all. 
 
    "And the angel said unto them,  Fear not, for behold, I bring you good 
tidings of great joy, 
which shall be to all people For unto you is born this day in the city of 
David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." 
 
    The sheep and the donkey knew, and so did the tree frog and the 
cricket. 
 
Editor's note: This  poem was written by Presbyterian Peacemaking Program 
Coordinator Gary Payton in Harare on the evening of Dec. 8.  He was in 
Zimbabwe coordinating Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) workshops at the Eighth 
Assembly of the World Council of Churches. - Jerry L. Van Marter 

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