palms and thin places (together at the table).

While I don't plan on linking all of my posts for Together at the Table back to this blog, I thought I'd share an excerpt from yesterday's post, centered on Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. This is such a special, important time of the year, and I pray for Christ's presence in your lives, sweet friends. Here's to a blessed Holy Week.

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The church I currently attend sings quite a bit of hymns, and often ones that I don’t recognize. And while I’m loving this change of pace, I’m still not entirely used to it. Church often entails me clinging to my bulletin for dear life, not realizing we’re singing a hymn until halfway through the first verse, at which point I frantically scour my bulletin for the accurate information, then spend nearly the rest of the song searching for it in the hymnal.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus’ peaceful and triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and marking the start of Holy Week, one of my favorite times of the year. I have the fondest memories of this day at my old church, where the children would all circle the adults in the sanctuary, eyes lit up like spotlights with palm branches soaring above their heads. It was such a simple, meaningful, and quite literal expression of child-like faith, and it always reminded me of how much I have to learn from children about Jesus.

But back to my current church. We were all given palm leaves upon entering, and were invited to circle the sanctuary with them during the processional. Per usual, the organ started, the congregation sang, and I found myself scrambling through the first verse for the right page in the hymnal. Add this to the fact that we were encouraged to leave our pews to walk with the processional, and I found myself actually growing anxious.

I finally found the right page, processional creeping ever closer, and decided flat out to stay where I was, to let the processional pass on by and simply focus on singing the right words of the hymn.

But then they passed by, palms high above their heads, and there was a still small voice saying, Go. Forget the rest and go.

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