Happy Palm Sunday, everyone--the beginning of Holy Week that leads us to Easter Sunday. Many of you know that I work for BYU's Jerusalem Center, which sounds exotic and adventurous until I confess that I do so from an office in Provo, Utah.
This job, which I began as a 23-year-old, became my career, and except for the 7-year hiatus I took to stay home with my kiddos, it has been a daily part of my life. Now that I'm less than a decade from retirement, I sometimes wonder how I came to be here, in the same spot. Was I stagnant? Did I fail? My sole coworker, Debbie, and I joke that what we do is quickly forgotten as soon as the students get to the Center, which is as it should be, because as soon as they get there, the real experience begins - the memories are made - the learning commences - and lives are changed. That's what's important.
Years ago, while waiting at the airport for a student group at 5:00 in the morning, I wrote this:
I am an application
An interview
A packing list
An answer for an airport question.
Yet when the plane departs,
It lands upon Holy Lands,
And with purpose complete,
I flutter to the floor of their experience,
Like a discarded map to a place
They now know by heart.
My job ends
When their adventure begins.
I am the foreward of a book, the primer of a paint job, the alcohol swab before the needle jab. I am the prep. So, when my life's work is comprised of preparatory actions that are invariably forgotten, where does that leave me when I'm old and gray and look back on the Did-I-Make-A-Difference scale?
Yesterday, I got an answer. I spent the day at our very first Jerusalem Center Alumni Conference. I was still content being largely anonymous, part of the background. I've long grown comfortable there. But the rooms were filled with people of all ages who had experienced life-changing experiences in the Holy Land. People who had found peace there. People who had found ways to access sacred space in themselves there.
Rooms of people who had found Jesus there.
Suddenly, the constant paperwork and stress over details no one will ever know about felt very worth it.
I am not a beloved teacher or a field trip leader who opened vistas to them they still keep in their hearts, but I helped to point the way.
On this Palm Sunday, when people line the path of Christ's Triumphal Entry into the Old City with palm fronds and fill the air with Hosanna shouts, it is easy to imagine myself there in the original crowd, in wonder at the arrival of our Savior.
Or as a shepherdess who stayed to watch the flock so the others could see the newborn babe.
A servant who readied the camels for the Magi's trip to follow the star.
The nameless woman in the crowded street who whispered, "He heals. Go see."
One of the multitudes at His Sermon on the Mount, hanging at the back of the crowd, making sure everyone else could hear.
A person at the crossroads who stood pointing, "That way. Follow Him. He teaches."
A disciple who shouted to anyone who would hear, "He has risen!"
After listening to these people who have carried the Holy Land home with them in their hearts, I feel better now, more reconciled, in realizing that my daily work, though small and insignificant, prepares these young people for a life-changing journey, for within the easily forgettable minutiae of preparation lies a valuable message they seem to hear:
"Find Him and follow Him home."
And that, my friends, is enough for me.
Commenti