I keep looking at the wipe-off board in the hospital room to remember the date. Days melt into each other in hospital rooms. The day of the week isn't written on this particular board, so I have had to mentally track to figure out the day of the week. Today is Sunday. Yes. It's Sunday, Palm Sunday to be exact. I'm trying to be mindful of Holy Week and the significance of the worship and Hosannas over two-thousand years ago. "Jesus, save us." Save us from this old broken world and these broken bodies and broken people. Save us from the heart-hurts and betrayals, rejections and not-enoughs. Save us... from... ourselves. When life catapults us into life-disrupted, have mercy and please... save us. If that saving only looks like Presence, help it to be enough.
A dear friend texted me a photo she took on their way home from church. There were two simple crosses made out of folded palm fronds. All I could think of were those branches laid down like a royal carpet and waved to hail the King while a simple donkey carried him into the last city he would ever visit before he surrendered to his own murder. Those two little palm leaf crosses remind me of all of those hosannas shouting and crying out for salvation, the kind of salvation we don't even truly know we need. Jesus knew and from his soul he cried looking over the city, "Oh Jerusalem." Oh me. Oh you. Hosannah! Save us... even in this hospital room.
Always grace,
Shanda
