John Piper’s moving poem The Innkeeper has recently been reissued in a new book with new paintings by Glenn Harrington. If you are unfamiliar with it, I would recommend listening to and reading it online first. Piper’s poetry, as he says, is meant to heard before read.
Here’s a description:
Only two weeks from his crucifixion, Jesus has stopped in Bethlehem. He has returned to visit someone important—the innkeeper who made a place for Mary and Joseph the night he was born. But his greater purpose in coming is to pay a debt. What did it cost to house the Son of God?
John Piper shares a tale of what might have been through the story-poem of an innkeeper whose life was forever altered by the arrival of the Son of God. Ponder the sacrifice that was made that night. Celebrate Jesus’s birth and the power of his resurrection. And encounter the hope his life gives you for today—and for eternity.
