Upturned Palms

a devotional for spring

Photo by Mykyta Martynenko on Unsplash

Thank you for joining us! Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:

For this week’s highlight, I wanted to share this beautiful thought that Kristin shared on our Reading the Big Book discussion thread a few weeks ago. Kristin wrote:

“I find that Nature shows me the mysterious paradoxes of God...the grandeur of a forest is held alongside the tiny mosses and lichen that call a forest 'home,' and that always reminds me of the paradox that even God, in his glory, still numbers the hairs on my head and knows when a sparrow falls. God is grand and exceedingly mysterious, but also whimsical and personal. Nature also reveals the apparent paradox in God's universal laws - that there is suffering alongside joy, just as in Nature, there is growth amidst decay. God's work through Nature beckons me to hold these paradoxes together, openly in the palm of my hand, instead of wrestling over them or struggling to make sense of them, as if there can only be one or the other way of being.”

Thank you so much for this, Kristin! Kristin creates incredible art steeped in symbolism under the name Hearthstone Fables, and we highly recommend checking it out!

If you want to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!

Now, on with this week’s devotional…

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in sun-baked hillsides
upturned palms
receive the Savior's entrance

but the only palms
that the pale people
of the north 
had ever known
were the roughened hands
they clasped
in prayer

and so

the northland children
of God's world
took willow
box
and yew
(long before the blood-red berries)

strewn upon the stone church floors

and holy alchemy
transformed them
(palm to palms)
and welcomed
the Savior
in. 

In much of medieval Europe, Palm Sunday was known as “Yew Sunday”, because palm fronds were difficult to come by in the temperate northern climates of England, Ireland, Germany, Latvia, and other places. So instead, the people would gather yew branches, willow, and box, and strew them on the church floor instead of palms. One year later, they would burn the branches, and use the ashes for their Ash Wednesday observances.

Yew, in particular, is a plant steeped in Christian and pre-Christian symbolism. As evergreens they came to represent eternal life, and their tendency to grow new shoots on dead limbs was the perfect image of resurrection. They also sport beautiful red berries, like drops of Christ’s blood.

(Incidentally, here in the Pacific Northwest, I find that long, sturdy fern fronds make lovely substitutes for palms. I select the most vibrant, the most unblemished, for this use.)

I think that “Yew Sunday” is a perfect picture of God—and the story of God—meeting us exactly where we are, not where we believe we ought to be.

God does not expect the believers in England or Germany—or me, in the wetlands of the Pacific Northwest—to grow palm fronds in order to show their devotion. Yew or willow will work just as well, if the heart is right. It is attention that invites holiness, not perfection. How many of us are trying to follow Him perfectly, when He would accept our tries and our attempts and our imperfections just as readily? A child’s faltering steps are beautiful to the parent; it is the child’s focus and attention that make their stumbling sacred.

This Holy Week, I invite us all not to worry about whether we have palms to lay at Christ’s feet, or yew, or willow, or ferns. Just welcome Him. That’s all He asks.

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