Palm Sunday

I had this vision of what it would be like to be a pastor, husband and father. They were beautiful pictures in my head. I dreamed about them like they would make up a perfect life. I forgot that I was going to continue to drag my sin around. I mess up all the blessings God has given me, and will mess up the ones yet to come too. After great sadness in the delivery room last year, we were excited for perfect happiness this time. Yet, there were moments when the baby was showing dips in her heart rate. There was talk of a C-section as the labor went on for a long time. The baby came on a Sunday that I had not planned for someone else to preach for me. I had Wednesday and the following Sunday covered, but not this day. Mindy, of course, had pain like was promised in Genesis because of our sin. She and I were trying so hard to enjoy every minute. We didn’t want to take a second for granted. Looking back I hadn’t enjoyed every minute of Jacob’s birth like I thought I would as I dreamed about being a father as a young man, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I was going to make sure every minute was enjoyed. But of course, it never works out perfect and we still had ups and downs and concerns to make sure Audrey’s health was good. Yet in the end, Audrey came out in all of her beauty.

As a child, I looked at Palm Sunday with great confusion. How on earth could they praise Jesus one moment and then crucify Him the next? Didn’t they know how awesome Jesus was? Didn’t they understand what He came to do? Palm Sunday was a great Sunday, and it was fun. I just knew we understood it better than anyone back at the time of Jesus. I was sure I appreciated and praised God more consistently than the people who stood by waving palms on the first Palm Sunday.

Time has gone on, and just like my perfect image of father, husband, and pastor, I have seen my sin come back time and time again. Even after a tragedy that reminded me of the pain and sin in this world, I still was not able to perfectly capture every moment of Audrey’s birth with joy. I whined about being tired, and at moments just wished she would hurry up and come.

Palm Sunday is a great time to reflect upon our lives as sinner and saints. Martin Luther talked about how one minute we are living in forgiveness and the next minute we are sinful. One minute we are asking God how we can serve Him today, and the next minute we are complaining that our life has too many trials and tribulations. One minute we are thankful for the joy of a cup of coffee and God’s Word to begin our day, and then next we are dreading this silly time change and how it wrecks our morning. One minute we are praising God for our spouse, and the next minute we wonder if they could just leave us alone for 5 minutes. Yes, no matter how hard we try not to, we have Palm Sunday moments of joy then days later forget that joy. So maybe it isn’t so odd how the people in Jesus’ day acted, and maybe scripture was teaching us about our ups and downs with Jesus also. But the amazing blessing is Jesus was focused on the plan to redeem and love us. He was headed to that cross no matter how the human world reacted to Him! He wants a relationship with you and was willing to die for it!