[Editor’s note: Today’s reflection, by author and professor Kate Bowler, offers a blessing for Palm Sunday, reflecting on what that might mean for us today. She has written two New York Times bestselling memoirs, “Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved)” and “No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear).” A cancer survivor, her motto is, “Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard. So, if you have ever ruined some perfectly good small talk at a party with your honesty, we’re already friends.”]
“Blessed are those who have learned
to walk in the light of your presence.”
—Psalm 89:15
Oh God, you are interrupting us with eternity once again.
Open our hearts and minds and eyes and ears to hear what you have to teach us.
On this Palm Sunday, time is marked as one small donkey
plods toward Jerusalem,
One with a face set like flint, feet almost grazing the ground, walks forward
toward the eastering of all sorrow
—not in the power of horses and swift victory,
but in small, steady steps.
toward the mystery
that through suffering, healing comes,
that through shame, dignity is restored,
that through the cross that powers are disarmed,
and death done away with forever.
Blessed are all those walking forward
into the great, small work they do:
in hospitals, homes, grocery stores,
classrooms, churches, and cubicles.
And blessed are we joining the crowds
waving palm branches
to shout ourselves hoarse:
“Hosanna! Save us! Save our world.”
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