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 as I remember the moment a few years ago, I was having one of those days. I almost didn’t go to the kids’ house that night—but decided to stop in quickly to say hello to their guests. It’s a good thing I did.
A God thing.
When I arrived, I quietly went up the staircase to the upstairs area where I could hear sounds of tiny voices. My granddaughters—always a safe and welcome place, I must have thought, especially when having one of those days.
As I peered over the upstairs railing trying to surprise my two granddaughters and their friends, my elder granddaughter, Hannah’s dear friend, Sydney, saw me first. With a huge smile lighting her face, she bounded over to hug me.
Then Hannah saw me and with a melody of words that touches the deepest parts of the souls of grandparents like no others can, she said “Oh…Hi, Gran!”, and jumped to her feet, bounced over to me 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 are headed toward this Sunday and recognize 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 been having a lot of them during the last four hundred years—as they were waiting for the coming of the promised Messiah.
This was the Messiah.
They were sure of it.
Jesus had been with them now for a while and particularly in the last three years—He had been teaching, healing, performing miracles, angering the religious rulers, and wandering the countryside with His disciples. Through all of that, He had given them hope that He would take over the government and make their lives better—here and now.
And now here He was heading to Jerusalem—this had to be the moment, they thought, when He would finish the job, sit on the throne, and begin to rule the land and their lives. Of course they were right, it was the moment, but it wouldn’t happen how they had long expected, imagined or believed.
And then just a few short days later, with the words “It is finished” He would breathe His last, and do what He came to do as He hung from and died on the cross at Calvary. In that moment, He finished the job He came to do by taking all of our misgivings, misdoings, mistakes and sins upon Himself, while He hung on that cross, so that we—from generation to generation—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. How could this be happening? They wouldn’t fully understand until three days later. But He was finished. And He finished well.
And He finished it for them, and for you and for me and for all the world, and for all those times and those days we have—like I had. For all those times we struggle through—for today, tomorrow and all the way into eternity.
That’s the finish we’re heading toward—for all our days.
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2016. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
