Palm Sunday, a Prayer

Jesus as the apostles went to get the colt

Did you have to psych yourself up

As you rounded the corner to enter the gates did you think

“This is going to suck”

When people threw their cloaks—did you focus on the children and try to think of how real their joy was?

Jesus did you laugh on Palm Sunday?

Did you steal your victory moment—because it was in peace.

Did you think of unions and BLM and Trans kids and all of the unnamed saints who live quietly.

Did they all flash before your eyes when you sighed and took a deep breath to continue your march into Jerusalem?

Did a tear of weariness and joy trickle down your face at the end of the day?

Did you rub your forehead, and smell the remnants of Nard and remind yourself that you too were beloved after a full and important day?

Jesus the longer I live—

The more human you become.

The more I see how you took on Sarc (flesh) for us so that our emotions are real to you–

Real and valid; thank you for celebrating Palm Sunday with us.

Thank you for it’s flashes of joy and humility and peace.

Hosanna.

Amen.

Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Image: https://i.swncdn.com/media/800w/cms/CCOM/65029-thinkstock-azerberber-palmbranch.800w.tn.jpg

If you enjoy my work, please consider contributing to my writing by supporting my Doctorate in Ministry in Creative Writing for Public Theology at Pittsburgh Seminary

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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