letters and lattes

I sat down and started drafting this blog late in December. I think originally it was meant to be about the hope for a new year and all the glorious “new” that is to come. In early January, I revisited it and made some additions. After a holiday and the commencement of school (and real life, maybe) I returned in early February and hoped to complete it. As I read through my drafting, I was amazed at how much my perspective had changed in really, only a month. But that’s January, isn’t it? We turn so sharply from expectant to busy. I wonder if you’ve felt the same, dear reader. 

I found myself drawn back to this poem today, on Palm Sunday. The phrase kept circling my mind – For His yoke is easy and His burden is light.¹ And it clicked for me – this suitcase of expectations and hope I had created, which had dwindled down to a little lunchbox, were all of my own making. And it is time to lay it at the cross, choosing instead “to match Your surrender / To mirror not my will, but Yours.”²

As we head into Holy Week, it is my prayer that you, too, would know you are carried. If you choose to be. 

Go well 

Steph

¹ Matthew 11:28-30

² Abandoned (2024) by Benjamin William Hastings 

watch/listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4Ty3kUQbiQ 

What we carry – a poem for Holy Week 

We start in January with our hands loaded up with hope. They are two big suitcases of all we hope and dream for this new year ahead. We hold them easily, because we have little else to carry. We are in the quiet days. Then, slowly, gradually, life picks up its pace. We are holding more and more. We have to drop a suitcase, maybe two. And we’re lucky if we have a lunchbox of hope left, cradled under our arms as we attempt to carry everything else. And sometimes, if we are honest, that little lunchbox is the heaviest of all. We’ve crammed it so full of our hopes and expectations, placed so much weight upon it, yet at any moment it could crash to the ground, splinter open and spill out at our feet. 

And suddenly it is March. We are becoming downtrodden. Our backs are bent and our noses runny. We aren’t sure where we left that little lunchbox of hope – it was just here – a moment ago. The leaves start to turn, the summer flowers burn and fade. We know elsewhere they are springing to life, for us the season turns to red and brown. 

And yet – 

– there is something more. 

Coming on the wind. A reminder, a whisper, if only we could hear it. A promise growing stronger. Palm fronds line the ground and as they crunch beneath our feet, we think we know. We think we remember. If only we could quiet our minds to hear it. If only we could still the world and grab it with both hands…

Hosanna

Hosanna

And it is here. The relief sweeps over us like a wave. This hope wasn’t for us to carry at all. This little lunchbox, the suitcase, it all – it was never meant for our shoulders, our hands, our hearts. We gaze at the cross, this gift of grace and we know the truth full well. 

This hope carries us. 

Amen.