FOR THE TIMES

You said too little

Or said too much

Something held you back

And the truth didn’t come out

You missed the opportunity

Or never even saw it

Sometimes palm trees aren’t planted by the water. Sometimes they’re living in a place where they don’t really belong. And for the most part, they thrive anyway. They might be surrounded by concrete with weeds popping through, or lining a drive nowhere near the salty breeze. And yet they thrive.

The middle is our proving ground. It’s where life might hurt, or get tiring, or feel empty. Our eyes are on later, and we’re hoping that whatever it is that’s weighing us down might just fade away.

Some endings become beginnings. Just when we feel like we can’t go under the wave one more time. Just when we think the weight of this is too heavy. Just when we can’t see the next step. When it ends, dies, runs out, leaves.

Where could they even go from here? The sorrow and confusion His followers must have felt, as He was forcibly led to Golgatha, bloodied, beaten, and scourged. They thought He would be their hero, their rescuer, their hope. But what hope did they have now? And who could they blame?

A baby smiled at me the other day in the grocery store.

In the ambulance ride

With my son in the back

Victim to his own behavior

In the emergency room

As the doctor tells him

That he can ask me to step out