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Palm Sunday...!
Saturday, March 28, 2015
By Robert Clements
This Sunday is Palm Sunday; when many years ago, men and women lined
the streets of Jerusalem, waving palm leaves and shouting ‘hosanna’, as
Jesus rode in on a donkey. It was a week before he would be crucified on
the cross; a week before he would stare down at the people around the
cross, and maybe think, “Wasn’t that man waving a palm leaf gladly at
me, last week?” or, “Wasn’t that the man I healed from leprosy?”
I wonder how in one week, a mob that shouted in ecstasy as he entered
Jerusalem, stood silent as he was humiliated by the priests, wounded by
the soldiers and finally killed?
How could hundreds who had received his healing touch, now turn silent?
Isn’t that a thought many of us have?
“I spent my whole life looking after my children, and now look at the
way they speak to me!”
“I stood by my husband through his difficult days, now he leaves me for
another woman?”
How could such happen we wonder.
It’s so good, isn’t it, when the palm leaves are waved at us! We love
being acknowledged! We love awards that sit on our mantelpieces, telling
all how appreciated we are.
“Hosanna!” our friends shout.
“He’s the greatest!” our children scream.
“What a provider!” whispers the wife looking at us adoringly.
And then the crucifixion. The wounds. The killing.
“How could the same ones, who appreciated, acknowledged and accepted me
now hold knives?”
I look at the cross, what does that dying man feel?
There is no look of anger as he looks at the people.
There is no feeling of revenge as his gaze wanders to the blind man he
made see!
He looks upward: Heavenward, where his father reigns.
He did not do it for the lame, the blind or the one with leprosy; he
did not heal for their appreciation.
He did everything for God.
And as you my friend hear those hosannas, as you get those trophies, as
people on podiums make appreciative speeches about your achievements,
you need to lift your eyes away and say, “It is not for the praises of
man, that I do what I am doing, it is not for earthly rewards I walk the
extra mile; it is for the One who placed me here on earth, and whatever
happens later from the same hands I helped, does not matter at all..!
