It's Palm Sunday and there are no stinkin' palm leaves.

I'm not good with tradition...just ask my very traditional father and my equally as traditional sister, both of whom I frustrate on an annual basis.  I don't put up the same Christmas decorations each year.  I never learned my alma mater's fight song.  And I think Thanksgiving without turkey is just fine.  But even I find myself feeling a little empty this morning, as we stare into the Holy Week ahead knowing the events we are used to won't be as we like to find them, beginning with Palm Sunday.

For the last several years I have served as a Director of Children's Ministry at our church.  Like most churches, we celebrate Palm Sunday by leading the children through the worship services, waving palm branches and shouting "Hosanna!" along the way.  It's actually a bit of a marathon because on our campus we have a total of 5 worship services on any given Sunday morning, 2 happening at once during one service hour and 3 happening at once during the other service hour.  And everything is a separate building.  It goes a little something like this....

At 9am children start arriving.  Our volunteers have become superstars at greeting, checking in and lining the children up all at once, all the while keeping their clothes clean and shoes on.  This is not as easy as it sounds (HA!) but the Lord goes before us....  We do this for about 10-15 minutes until we look up and suddenly realize we should be heading into the service.  We pass out palm branches--1 per child--answering questions like, "Why can't I have two branches?" and "Do you want to hear about my pet turtle?" and nearly jog to the sanctuary (yes, sometimes we run in church).

In each service we walk the children in, in one or two or six "lines", and try not to lose anyone.  The worship venues have the most magical power of silencing even the most boisterous child even when (ESPECIALLY WHEN) you want them to sing or say something out loud.  The Bible says that in Jesus' day the people cried out on Palm Sunday.  In our day we stare with wide eyes and sometimes run into the person in front of us because we're not paying attention.  And someone always falls over.  And breaks their palm branch.  And pokes their neighbor.  We do this five times so that by the end of the morning I feel like I have just run a circus.  I am exhausted, hungry, hoarse.  But also my heart is incredibly full.

Tradition can bind us together.  It links one year to the next, fills us with nostalgia and remembrance and helps us to make sense of time and space.  But watch what happens when I remove the last word of my sentence:  Tradition can bind us together.  To an activity.  To a ritual.  To sometimes missing the point.  In its absence we feel empty, like we are missing out.  We might even feel a little lost.

On this Palm Sunday I am missing all of my little friends.  I am missing the chaos and calamity and unspeakable joy.  I know that God sees me in my grief.  I know that He meets me in this absence.  He sees the emptiness, the gaps where I am missing something, the void where I'm floating a little lost....
...And He fills all of it.

We are missing our tradition today, but we are not missing our King.  And all the emptiness we feel when the world does not look the way we want it to is simply more space for our Savior to occupy.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna in the highest. 

XOXO...Kelly