I need a remembrance.

I need a table in an upper room with bread and a cup sitting as a centerpiece. Where I can leave the parts that have been taken and broken and betrayed — the parts where wounds bleed and bitterness grows — under the table at my feet.

Where I can bless the wounds and break the bitterness and give thanks for it all and do it in remembrance of Him.

I need a ruin.

I need a cross high up on a hill with salvation pooling below. Where I can leave the parts of me that have been beaten and flogged and accused in its shadow. Where I can be saved not just from sin but from myself.

Where I can receive the forgiveness He offers me, and offer forgiveness of my own, in remembrance of Him.

I need a resting place.

I need a tomb in the cleft of a rock where shelter and protection hide me. Where I can shed the blankets of isolation and loneliness that have become too heavy for me outside the door. Where I can receive living water and not just sour wine and be truly quenched.

Where I can wrap up the broken pieces and prepare them for burial, laying them to rest in remembrance of Him.

I need a renewal.

I need a stone that’s rolled away and old rags folded and left behind. Where I am new in mind and spirit and body and soul, and I can walk out healed. Where thirst has no hold on me, and where isolation and brokenness and loneliness have no more victory.

Where I can roll away the stone that seems impossible to move and emerge free, showing my scars as a remembrance of Him.

What I need is a resurrection.

I just desperately need Jesus. I need to let walls I’ve erected crumble and let Him to take these gray ashes and flickering embers and create something beautiful out of them, as only He can. I need the table and the cross and the tomb and the stone in a way I haven’t before. I need His body and His blood and His prayers and His forgiveness in an entirely new way.

I need a resurrection.

So today, I lay down my garments of distrust and cynicism and frustration and I wave my open palms and I welcome Him in. I shout Hosanna because blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, bringing faith and hope and love. I pray I remain close to the vine and not deny Him or betray Him. I pray I remain steadfast and faithful, and on that third day I will be among the first to see that He has risen just as He said He would, and that through my tears I will see Him, as if it were the first time.

I need a resurrection.