Serve Day, this past Saturday, was a huge success. We had people building, cooking, folding, cutting, weaving, picking up trash, cleaning out the neighborhood street drains and putting together lunch bags for homeless people. I am so glad to be part of a church that sees the needs of people and does whatever is needed to get the job done. A special thanks to Dan Harrison, Chad Royal and the Serve Team for putting together a great event.
Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
This is one of my favorite passages of scripture. The story has to do with Jesus, donkeys, kids shouting, palm trees and rocks. All of my favorite things! When Jesus came into Jerusalem the people laid their cloaks on the ground, waved palm branches and shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The leaders told Jesus to tell the people to be quiet. Jesus told them that if the people remained silent, that even the very rocks of the street would sing praise.
When I was a boy, we had two giant coconut trees in our yard. Their fronds were so large, my guess up to 15 feet long, so of course after we heard about the children waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna,” we had to do the same. I climbed up to the top of the coconut tree and cut palm fronds for each of my friends. We learned a few lessons pretty quick. The palm fronds that they waved were not from a 40 foot coconut tree. Try as we might, we were not going to get those heavy things up off the ground and in the air. The other lesson was, their parents probably didn’t care about their palm trees as much as my parents cared about ours.
Just think how much God must love to hear us sing praise to Him if He was willing to have the very rocks of the streets cry out to Him! The people sang out and praised Jesus as their Savior. They thought Jesus was going to be a military savior, saving them from the bondage of Roman rule, but God’s plan was bigger and eternal. He was going to save them from the bondage of sin.
This Resurrection season, let’s remember the great sacrifice that Jesus paid for our Salvation. This Sunday is Palm Sunday. Why not have your kids go into the backyard and shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Make sure you look at all the upcoming activities for Holy Week. You will want to make sure you are part of every bit of it.
Greg