Christmas Seed

Christmas Seed

(For K.)

All day you walk, trudge, shuffle, stumble, limp
and yet not ever do you leave My sight.
I see the slightest quiver of past’s corpse
when through the haze you think, It’s Christmas night.

I lead you then to Oppenheimer Park
where friends of Mine are serving soup and gifts.
I nudge the girl, get her to catch your eye.
The parcel’s in your hand, you feel its heft.

My heart applauds when you snap golden bow
peel off the amethyst and ruby wrap.
Your happy smile shines through the rain and cold.
This lovely candle will become a crop.

For you are worthy, loved and beautiful.
And though you have no home to bring it to
this gift is just a start, My darling girl
of the sweet home to which I’m leading you.

© 2013 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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This year our church’s Christmas production had several people telling stories of significant Christmases in their lives. One was K., who told of how she went from drinking socially at the Press Club—a Vancouver bar were the journalists hung out—to all-out addiction. She ended up homeless on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

She told about how between getting what she needed, she walked a lot. One Christmas night that walking took her to Oppenheimer Park. There people were handing out gifts. She got a package of candles. “I was so delighted,” she said. “They reminded me that I liked beautiful things.”

Now, about five years later, she is sober, back working as a journalist, and involved in our church’s Sunday night Recovery Church campus.

I believe what happened to her that night was part of a beautiful plan. In this poem I tried to tell her story from the viewpoint of the One who orchestrated that plan.

My hope for you is that the One who found K. that Christmas night is also part of your Christmas! May it be Merry!