When There Are No Palm Branches

It is Palm Sunday.

It was a day of celebration. It was a day of crowds. Oh, the crowds! They thronged around Jesus. They lined the streets. They lined the streets and jostled and pushed and reached hands out to touch Jesus. Not a speck of social distancing in sight, they lined the streets shoulder to shoulder, waving their arms, shouting, waving their palm branches, lining Jesus' path with leaves and coats. The wounded, the healed, the children, the hopeful, the sceptical, the downright cynical all gathered together, hailing Jesus as the coming triumphant king.

It was a noisy, crowded, jubilant affair.

It was everything today is not.

It is Palm Sunday, and we are scattered, sitting alone in our various homes. Our streets are strangely subdued. There are no crowds, and we cast suspicious eyes on any group of people that is not at least six feet apart. People hurry by each other, often with eyes downcast. We hold our breath as we pass others, afraid of the very air we breathe in and out. The whole world is on breathless pause. "Oh, Lord, save! Hosanna!" is not a jubilant cry of expectation today, but a wordless groan of collective grief.

It is Palm Sunday, and today is nothing of that first Palm Sunday, and I am sitting in my living room, alone, missing my church family keenly. It is a Sunday of grief rather than a Sunday of celebration.

And yet.

Those first crowds misunderstood. They proclaimed Jesus King of the Jews. They identified him as Messiah. He was all those things. But they assumed he was marching in as a military leader. They believed he was gathering an army to fight the Romans. They were looking for an earthly king, an earthly messiah, one who would rescue them from their earthly troubles. And when, in one week's time, Jesus was arrested and tried, that same crowd gathered outside the courts and called for his crucifixion. He had failed to meet their expectations and so they rejected him. Their eyes were stuck on the earthly, and when their expectations were not met, they turned from celebration to cynicism.

I think I am not that different. My eyes are also stuck on the earthly.

I am praying, "Oh, Lord, save!" I want God to do the miraculous. I want COVID-19 to disappear off the face of the earth overnight. I want to wake up tomorrow morning to discover that every person who is on a ventilator can miraculously breathe on his or her own. I want to wake up tomorrow morning to discover that people everywhere are healed, that doctors are looking around for a virus that simply no longer exists, that the world collectively is left shaking its head in bewilderment at what happened. I want my friends and family who are frontline workers -- paramedics, respiratory therapists, nurses, police officers, grocery store clerks -- I want them to be able to do their jobs without putting their and their families' health and lives at risk. I want to be able to stop having to wash my hands every five minutes, to grocery shop and linger and read labels, to go buy a Big Mac if I want (I don't, because even in a pandemic I have no interest in eating a Big Mac, but if I did). Goodness, I want to be able to scratch my nose without fearing I have introduced a contagion into my system. I want to be able to visit my mom and my brothers and sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews and give them all hugs. I want to be able to go to church. I long for my safe places to feel safe again. I want things to go back to normal. I am waiting, waiting, waiting for the king to ride into Jerusalem triumphant, to defeat the invisible soldiers of death that stalk our streets. I want to be able to wave my palm branches and gather in crowds (I who have never wanted to gather in crowds in my life) and cry, "Oh, Lord, save!"

But what if I, like those crowds in Jerusalem, am misunderstanding? What if the King has no intention of killing COVID-19, just as he had no intention of killing the Roman soldiers? I don't want to think that. I don't want to live like this, under the oppression of this virus. But I can't help wondering, What if I'm all wrong about this? What if killing COVID-19 isn't the apex of his reign after all? What if his goals are much higher than that? What if his goals are to lead me to suffering, through suffering, and into greater righteousness? What if his goal is this, in the words of Peter: "You have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith -- more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire -- may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:6-7)? What if I am to "count it all joy ... when [I] meet trials of various kinds, for [I] know that the testing of [my] faith produces steadfastness." And maybe I need to "let steadfastness have its full effect, that [I] may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (Jam. 1:2-4)? What if the King riding in on the donkey wants to do something much bigger in my heart, but I am far too busy expecting him to kill the enemy virus to recognise what he is doing?

This Palm Sunday is nothing like that first Palm Sunday. No jubilation. No noise. No crowds. No palm branches waving. Just a hushed, sad, lonely stillness. A sigh of sorrow instead of a cry of excitement.

But maybe this Palm Sunday is not so different. There was then, and there is today, in all of us, a great wordless longing for deliverance. There is in all of us a profound ache for freedom: for them, freedom from the Roman oppressors; for us, freedom from the walls of our homes, freedom from the fear, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the loneliness, the financial devastation. We weep, "Oh Lord, save! Oh, Lord, save!" And, perhaps there is in all of us, as there was in that first triumphal procession, an expectation that deliverance will look thus and so. Those early crowds in Jerusalem were filled with expectations, and when Jesus failed to meet their expectations, they bayed for his blood just one week later. I wonder, if I am not careful, could I do the same? Could I, angry because my expectations for deliverance are not being met, turn away?

Next weekend is Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I pray it will find me at the foot of the cross, not in derision because he didn't do as I expected, but standing in wonder because he is far more than I ever dreamed. Truly this man is the Son of God. I pray it will find me rejoicing at the empty tomb -- for the empty tomb loses none of its wonder if I stand there alone. After all, Jesus met Mary Magdalene there, as she stood weeping alone. And I pray that I will wait for deliverance, not with expectations, but with expectancy. I do not know what salvation will look like -- if it will be rescue from the pandemic or redemption through it -- but what I do know is this: I long for my faith to be genuine. So, this Palm Sunday, when there are no palm branches to wave, I pray.

Hosanna. Oh, Lord, save.

Mini-Eggs in the Midst of COVID-19

Yesterday, I was miserable. I was tired of staying home. I was resentful that I had to. I was angry that an invisible pathogen had disrupted my comfortable existence, and I wanted it to quit, right now. It's been two and a half weeks, and people are still getting sick and people are still dying, and the curve's not flattened yet and it's certainly not going down, and how long is it going to be, anyway? Weeks more? Months? Am I going to have to spend the whole beautiful summer stuck at home? It all just sucks.

Yes, I was miserable. I was grumpy and ungrateful and fed up.

The problem is, that I'm stuck at home. I can't get away when I'm feeling rumpled in my spirit. I can't distract me. And my poor housemate is locked up with me for who knows how much longer, and none of this is her fault, and if I don't deal with my stinky attitude, I make her lock-down more miserable, too. So I need to deal with my attitude.

I should pray. Problem is, I didn't feel like praying. What difference does it make, anyway? I've been praying and praying and praying, what feels like an endless wordless groan -- name after name after name of people I care about, and what difference is it making? This plague is going to last as long as it's going to last. The people who are going to get sick and die are going to get sick and die. I can beg and plead and look to the sky, but what difference does it make? God is going to do what God is going to do whether I pray or not.

I'm telling you, I was miserable, and grumpy, and fed up.

I'm not even going to get to see my family at Easter. I'm not going to get to go to church on Easter. And all I could think about was that I should have laid in a stock of mini-eggs.

Really, Marianne? Really?

Really?

Are you really going to go there? Fussing and fuming because you don't have mini-eggs when people are dying? I mean, how much shallower can you get?

Sometimes it takes truly outrageous thoughts to enter my head to bring me up short.

And it did bring me up short. Actually, it brings me to my knees. I read an article about how this season of lock-down is happening in the middle of Lent. N. T. Wright is right; fussing over chocolate mini-eggs is downright petty and silly now, when I think about the many things so many of us have had to give up -- jobs, socialising, church services, neat, safe routines, going to the gym, seeing loved ones, hugs from dear friends ... health ... safety ... life.

But it makes me realise how, still, I grasp for control. My world has shrunk considerably since March 12. But, still, I am holding tightly to the world that remains. I have not truly surrendered. I have reluctantly relinquished control of things beyond the border of my property lines, but I am hanging on with white knuckles to the things that lie within. I am trying with everything in me to live my life as much like I did Before. Before coronavirus. Before social distancing. Before everything collapsed and friends lost work and loved ones had to go out there every day and risk their lives because they have to go out there and I don't, before people I know started getting sick and maybe even dying. I fixate on the mini-eggs, not because I really want mini-eggs, but because in the old days, I'd have gone out and gotten mini-eggs if I'd wanted them that badly, but now the mini-eggs aren't worth risking my life for, and Out There -- where I have no control -- intrudes on In Here where I think I do. It's not really mini-eggs I want. It's control. And if not actual control, then at least the illusion of it.

It makes me realise how, even in this season where my world has shrunk to the property line and not having mini-eggs is silly in light of how much we have all had to give up, even in this season of dearth, compared to so many in the world, there is no lack at all.  "Christ, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself." How have I emptied myself? Yes, I have lost convenience and comfort and the freedom to go wherever I want whenever I want to. I have lost the sense of safety I had. I have lost the ability to gather with others. These are not insignificant losses, and I know that a good part of my angst is grief. But still, I have so much. I have a home, a roof over my head. I am able to socially distance because I have a home with walls and a roof and doors that I can close to the outside world. I have food in plenty on the table, even in the middle of a pandemic, and when I can't go out to get groceries, I can place an order for someone to bring them to me. I have clean running water, the ability to wash my hands dozens of times a day, to take hot showers and do laundry, and I even have hand lotion to soothe hands that are dry from being washed dozens of times a day. I can text and call and video chat with loved ones. I have clothes on my back and a car, filled with cheap gas, sitting in the driveway. I have a yard and a garden and I can sit on the back deck in the sunshine and do my grading because I even still have a job. Even in the middle of a pandemic, I am rich beyond most of the world's wildest dreams, and while people are squashed cheek-to-jowl in refugee camps in Syria and Jordan, and in dumps in Mexico and India, and in tiny apartments in all the urban centres around the world, I am complaining because I can't go out and buy mini-eggs, grumbling because my comfortable routine has been rumpled, and because the biggest thing I am grieving is the loss of my illusion of control.

Such a shabby spirituality. I know it won't do.

I'm not in control, not out there, and not in here, either. And it's only a matter of time before the realities of "out there" are felt "in here", in ways that are far more significant than mini-eggs. I don't know how that will happen. I know for many, it is happening already. Jobs lost. Rent due. Loved ones sick. Loved ones dying. Loved ones dead. I'm afraid of it, afraid of the pain that will come. I'm afraid that if I admit I have no control, I will be consumed by fear. But that is a lack of trust in a Sovereign God, a God who I am learning to lean into when I think about "out there" and "tomorrow" but who I am still holding at arms' length when I think about "here" and "today".

So here I am, on my knees, again. Praying. Not so much because praying changes things out there (although I fully believe it does), but because I so much need him to change things in me. I need to shed the shabby spirituality and be clothed in ferocious faith. If I am to be locked up for days, weeks, months, I do not want to emerge from my solitary confinement the same as I went in. I want him to change me. I want him -- frightening thought -- to empty me.

And then to fill me with himself, the one who holds all my yesterdays, every part of my today, and all my tomorrows in his hands, out there, and in here.

Even in the midst of COVID-19.

Through It All, It Is Well

On March 12, my life changed. I imagine that yours did too, around that time, if not on that exact day.

I left my office for the last time in I don't know how long. I took my laptop, but I left my plants. I took my books, but left my shoes. I took my coffee but left my coffee cream in the fridge. I thought I might be coming back. I was taking my things in a superfluity of caution.

And now, like everyone else in the world, I am at home. Learning new words, words I never wanted to learn: COVID-19, pandemic, social isolation, quarantine, social distancing. Feeling feelings I really don't enjoy: fear, anxiety, stress, concern, confusion, uncertainty about the future, loneliness, longing to see loved ones, longing for a hug. I am learning, whether I want to or not, how to stay connected with students scattered across the province. I have been plunged into the world of Microsoft Teams, Zoom meetings, recording lectures (and discovering some of my idiosyncrasies as I do so -- who knew my voice sounded like that?), and rearranging assignments and schedules to accommodate social distancing.

It feels surreal. I look out the window, and the sun is pouring down and the breezes are soft and little green shoots are pushing up from the ground. The birds are singing. The spring peepers are calling in the woods. My horse is shedding gobs of hair. The whole world pulses with the joyous anticipation of spring. Yet, in jarring contrast that my mind can't quite comprehend, pestilence stalks. I am uncomfortably conscious of touching anything that is not in my house. I find myself withdrawing from people I love to maintain that supposedly-safe six-foot circle. I am hyper-aware of every twinge in my body -- that tickle in my throat -- is it allergies, or the plague? The two realities are so diametrically opposed to each other, I have a hard time reconciling them.

And yet, both are true.

I was walking in my backyard the other day, thankful I at least have a yard in which to walk, thankful I am not stuck in an apartment in China or Italy or Toronto. Last fall, I planted approximately 150 bulbs in the lawn in an effort to naturalise the yard. Those bulbs lay in the soil all winter. To be honest, I had forgotten about them. And the yard is pretty wet around this time of year. Ok, that might be an understatement. The lawn is ragged and muddy and mostly underwater. It looks bad. It looks hopeless. Every spring, I nearly despair that it will ever look like anything other than a mud-hole.

But as I sloshed through the puddles in my rubber boots, I spotted something.

Tiny little spots of colour were pushing their way up through the mud. They were tiny, for sure. Impossible even to see from the deck. Definitely not 150 spots of colour. Maybe more like 20 of them.

Nevertheless they were there.

They were there, and they brightened my day. They were not less beautiful for their lack of size. In fact, perhaps they were more beautiful for their delicacy, for my having to stoop down and study them. They were more beautiful because these tiny slips of colour were defying the mud and the wet and were pushing up into the sunshine and the warmth. And they delighted my heart.

They are metaphorical, these little spring flowers. In some way, they epitomise everything about this strange new world we're living in.

When I look at the news, I could despair. All appears to be bleakness and fear. It is like looking at my backyard from the deck, full of flood and mud. Hope drowns if I study the obvious. Fear rises if I spend too much time reading the countless alarmist posts on my social media feeds. My heart get sucked down into the mud of anxiety if I think about what might happen tomorrow, next week, next month, whenever.

But this is the world in which I find myself. This is the life I have been given for this season. I can fuss and fume because it is not yet sandal weather and I can't go barefoot across the lawn and the yard does not look the way I want it to at this moment, or I can pull on my rubber boots and do what God has called me to do this day.

So I'm donning my rubber boots. I'm washing my hands. I'm keeping my distance. I'm avoiding my family and friends. I'm staying home. I'm keeping up-to-date, but not too up-to-date; there is nothing I can do about the numbers, anyway. It changes nothing for me. I'm avoiding social media and its alarmism. I'm doing the tasks God gives me to do today, and I'm doing my best to live one day at a time and not to think too far ahead. I'm playing music that reminds me of the sovereignty of God.

And don't I find tiny spots of colour pushing up through the mud. Another day of health. Neighbours staying safely six feet away but wanting to know how everyone is doing, offering to care for each other, assuring each other that we're there to help. Brothers and sisters in Christ reaching out across distances -- checking in. I discover a new hunger in my heart for Jesus. I look forward to my Bible reading with a fresh awareness of how much I need the Lord. I dread the news, but I am excited to open my Bible. I pray more. I pray constantly. Most precious of all, perhaps, is that I am learning to trust. I am learning that if I turn my eyes off the news and onto Jesus, he holds my heart steady. I'm learning that life out of my control but in his control is ok. No, not just ok. It is good. Through it all, it is well.

Spots of colour pushing up through the mud.

And maybe that is the way of this world. The sunshine and springtime live side-by-side with the pestilence. The pestilence makes the sunshine and springtime more precious. The sunshine and springtime make the pestilence more bearable. They remind me that, as dark as this day may be, God is there, bringing hope and joy, steadying my feet and soothing my soul. The world is groaning in travail and my heart groans with it. The world is glowing with the hope of spring and my heart soars with it.

God is on his throne and it is well with my soul.

******

Here are some of the songs I'm playing on repeat. You may recognise some lines from them in my blog.

Robin Mark -- All Is Well

Bethel -- Through It All