Christmas Eve

What do you fear? Good news is louder than fear

Honeysuckle

There is an abandoned house on my block.

Maybe someone owns it and is just waiting to fix it up,

or maybe it belongs to a family that simply cannot let it go.

Either way, the yard is an overgrown tangle of weeds—

crabgrass and yellow nutsedge, horsetail and clover—

unforgiving and entrenched.

Over the summer, a honeysuckle bush crept

from that forgotten house over the fence and through the yard.

It spilled out in broad patches on the sidewalk. As a result,

you could not pass that mess of a house without the taste of honey in your mouth.

You could not pass that mess of a house without being engulfed in the sweet scent

of something good. It was almost as if the earth was saying, sure, things are chaotic here,

but pause for a moment. Pull a flower bud off in your fingers. Break the stem.

Slurp the tiny bead of honey at the base. Remember that even when bad news is unforgiving

and entrenched, good news grows out of its cage, across the sidewalk, just to get to you.

Prayer by Rev. Sarah A.  Speed | A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org