Trinity Willows

Compassionate One, with humble hearts, we ask for strength, wisdom and compassion to care for all your children. Guide us as we help our neighbors in need so that all can “abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (Isaiah 32:18).

A prayer for Palm Sunday

Ever-living God, let this mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus: that as he from his loftiness stooped to the death of the cross, so we in our lowliness may humble ourselves,
believing,
obeying,
living,
and dying,
to the glory of the Father; for Jesus Christ’s sake.
Amen

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894)

Palm Sunday

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,

The seething holy city of my heart,

The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?

Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;

They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,

And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find

The challenge, the reversal he is bringing

Changes their tune. I know what lies behind

The surface flourish that so quickly fades;

Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,

The hardness of the heart, its barricades,

And at the core, the dreadful emptiness

Of a perverted temple. Jesus come

Break my resistance and make me your home.

(From Sounding the Seasons, by Malcolm Guite, CanterburyPress 2012)