Psalm 31:9-16

“Art is wound turned into light.”  —Braque

Abandonment, affliction, suffering, sorrow, grief, guilt, desolation, despair, depression. To be a human being is to be vulnerable at times to the anguish of one or more of these states of being. For some people, myself included, a limited number of days and nights have held the extremity of these feelings. For many others, the cry uttered in this Psalm is a near-permanent condition.

The sufferers of these emotional states express a language of soul that becomes a repeated theme when one views images of this extremity of anguish. We “hear” the cry, though it makes no sound. The hands placed over the face speaks of the condition of an interior wound that agonizingly communicates the feeling of being cast off, adrift, alone, with no Other from whom to draw comfort. The Psalmist cries from these depths, and centuries of readers have felt in these words the reverberations of their own laments.

In the same way that the Psalmist renders a “telling” of the truth in Psalm 31, I also chose to arrange the expressions and images in a way that I find to be healing and meaningful. By repetition and arrangement of the images around a central motif, this mandala seeks to transform the experience of an “eye wasted away from grief” into a place where the soul can be brought to rest in the central image of the uplifted hands. I offer this mandala to all who have felt the keen wound of loss. Essentially, this composition is an attempt toward a visual expression that echoes the complaint, the form, and ultimately the praise of this Psalm.

                                                                                 —Rachelle Oppenhuizen

John 12:12-16

Today’s passage tells the story of Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. All four Gospels begin with what they call “The Triumphal Entry.” As a child I can recall being given a Sunday school leaflet on that day showing Jesus riding on a donkey while the crowds of adults and children waved palm branches and threw cloaks in front of him. It was a real parade. At Hope Church on Palm Sunday, we give our children palm fronds and lead them around the sanctuary calling out “Hosanna!” We sing the hymn, “Hosanna, loud Hosannas, the little children sang.” Children are very much a part of our Palm Sunday observance. We might ask why.

Two thousand years ago Jesus arrived in Jerusalem amid talk of a coming King, the Messiah.  Everyone wondered if this could be the man. Instead of a king in royal robes mounted on a stately horse, they see a humble man in a drab homespun robe seated on a donkey. Nevertheless, caught up in the fervor of the moment, they call out, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” The children run alongside of him, cheering him and waving their palm fronds. They see in him something that older eyes do not, and so they cry out their praise, and Jesus recalls the ancient prophecy:

Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself. (Psalm 8:2)

We can learn from this child-like faith. We don’t need the trappings of a conqueror to know a true king. Jesus made a triumphal entry, but the accolades didn’t last. Five days later the same crowd would shout for his crucifixion. Instead, like the children, we can believe in him, we can trust him, and no matter what comes next, He is our Savior. Praise be to God!

Prayer:  Gracious God, like the children, we would praise you with all our hearts. We pray that our faith will be strong and unshakeable through whatever lies ahead for us. May your love shine in us and in all we do. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

                                                                                          —Ruth Donaldson

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

In these verses, I am pulled outside of myself, responding to and praising the Lord as the Master Builder, the one who set the rejected cornerstone in its place, the one who is still building.

In his “A Future Not Our Own,” Archbishop Romero notes:

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning…

We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker….

The world is not my own to perfect, nor is it to be ignored. We join in with the Master Builder, joining in the procession of praise, liberated in knowing that what we do not have to do everything; instead, we join in, freed from guilt, joyfully serving the budding Kingdom.

—Scott Rumpsa