Hosanna… hoshi a na

In this blog I am bringing together threads of several thoughts.

The first – why have I been thinking of the word Hosanna?

As some of you know, (and my last blog mentioned) I had a fall a few weeks ago and injured myself. If you read my last blog, you would also know that I found a video of my late husband singing Holy City (with a small alteration to the words).

I played it so often, that some mornings when I woke up, “Hosanna in the highest…” was resounding in my mind. I smiled to myself and plodded on with what I could manage that day. Eventually that meant limping to the computer to work on book three in the series.

Until my office chair broke. After a day of sitting at my computer, on a hard wooden kitchen chair, I realised this was not going to work. So I decided to push a lounge chair into the room and made the pain worse.

Trying to work at the computer from the lounge chair, did not work either. I had to sit so awkwardly in order to see what I was looking up, I could barely walk.

But I could think…

I spend a lot of time checking the date origin of words for my book series. When I was writing the first one, Hold the Faith, there was a word which fitted what I wanted very well. When I checked the word, it was first used in the late nineteen hundreds. I could hardly put it in a book about the Apostle John (1^st Century AD) and his (fictional) family and brethren. Since then, the date origin of words is carefully checked.

So, the next time I woke up with ‘Hosanna in the highest’ in my thoughts, I pondered. I had some recollection of hearing in a sermon or sermonette that ‘hosanna’ meant ‘save us’. Mmm.

Now that I have been gifted an office chair that is very comfortable, I can sit at the computer for most of the day. (Still sore, so I have to move around some of the time.)

Finally, I looked up the word ‘Hosanna’.

Catholic Quick Answers states

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt. 21:9) was shouted by the crowds as Jesus entered Jerusalem. The word hosanna is associated with rejoicing.
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/what-does-hosanna-mean

I always check several sites

Of two others saying the same thing, this is clear – paragraph two

Hosanna is often thought of as a declaration of praise, similar to hallelujah , but it is actually a plea for salvation. The Hebrew root words are found in Psalm 118: 25, which says, “Save us, we pray, O LORD!” (ESV). The Hebrew words yasha (“deliver, save”) and anna (“beg, beseech”) combine to form the word that, in English, is “hosanna.” Literally, hosanna means “I beg you to save!” or “please deliver us!”
http://www.gotquestions.org/hosanna.html#ixzz3SijxIbmI

From another site, which was about the Feast of Tabernacles…

“Hoshi a na!”. This heartfelt cry is translated as “Save us now!”

So, however uplifting the song Holy City is, Hosanna doesn’t really fit

Perhaps the next time the lines of the song come to mind, I need to make a mental correction, and substitute ‘hosanna’ with ‘hallelujah’. Yes,  I looked that up too. It does mean ‘praise  God’.

Sharing my thoughts

Susan