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Palm Sunday has a special place in my heart. I went totally blind after a stroke hit my optic nerves 14 years ago. There was no pain, no blinding light. One day I just woke up and could not see! I told myself that if the cat was not sitting on my face, something had happened to me during the night. The cat was not sitting on my face. Five surgeries on my eyes over the course of a year, and I regained some sight but it was all shades of gray and people’s features were fuzzy.
Then came Palm Sunday. I was preaching at a small church in the South Valley. Something was different. I walked in and looked around. I SAW GREEN! I saw green palms and green altar clothes and green plants! I could not contain my excitement and started yelling “I SEE GREEN!” A nice lady came up and said “Yes dear. It is Palm Sunday, so there is a lot of green today. Do you think it is too much?” I started twirling around. “You don’t understand. Once I was blind, but now I see. I can see color; I see green!”
In the ensuing months, I became able to see red and blue, in addition to the green. Because I can now see red and green, I am allowed to drive again. Blue skies are also nice to look at. No other colors have come back, but I am grateful for what I have. When it came time to buy a new car, it had to be a green one, to remind me of the tremendous gift I had been given. Plus, it is easy to find in the parking lot among all the boring white, black, and silver cars.
Green is the color of life in nature. When I see the green of leaves on trees or flowers starting to push up their stalks from the earth where they have lain hidden all winter, it reminds me of the wonderful gift God has given to all of us at Easter. We may have to go through some awful times, we may get knocked down or even succumb to a terminal disease. But no matter what is thrown our way, we have the promise Jesus gave us of renewed life at the end of the darkness. We can look forward to renewed life; we will all see GREEN.