Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’”
Matthew 21: 8-9 (NIV)
We all have those days, and I was having a bit of one yesterday. I almost didn’t go to the kids’ house last night—but decided to stop in quickly to say hello to their guests. Good thing I did. When I arrived, I quietly ascended the staircase to the upstairs area where sounds of tiny voices could be heard.
As I peered over the upstairs railing trying to surprise my two granddaughters and their friends, Hannah’s dear friend Sydney saw me first and with a huge smile, she bounded over to hug me. Then my elder granddaughter, Hannah, saw me and with a melody that touches the souls of grandparents like no others, she said “Oh…Hi, Gran!”, jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around my waist and reminded me again why God gave her to us.
On that day over two-thousand years ago, which we acknowledged again yesterday as Palm Sunday, people gathered on the streets, peered around corners and out of windows to see the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. They too had been having one of those days—actually they had a lot of them during the last four hundred years—waiting for the coming of the promised Messiah. This was He. They were sure of it. He had been with them now for awhile and particularly in the last three years—teaching, healing, performing some miracles and wandering the countryside with His disciples—He had given them hope that He would take over the government and make their lives better—here and now.
And now He was heading to Jerusalem—this had to be the moment, they thought, when He would finish the job and begin to rule their land and their lives. It was, but it would not happen how they had long expected.
With the words “It is finished” He breathed his last, and did what He came to do as He hung from the cross on Calvary just a few short days later. In that moment, He finished the job He came to do by taking all of our misgivings, misdoings, mistakes and sins upon Himself onto that cross so that we might have an eternal relationship with Him, and through Him, with His Father.
Peering at Him hanging on the cross—they didn’t get it. They wouldn’t fully understand until three days later. But He was finished.
And He did it for them, for you and for me and for all those times and days we struggle through—for today, tomorrow and all the way into eternity.
Now that’s a melody that will cause an eternal lift in our hearts.
In His Name—Scott
