Palm Sunday...merciful and mighty

          Palm Sunday--the first day of Holy Week.
          "And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it.  And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, 'Hosanna!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!  Hosanna in the highest!'" (Mark 11:7-10)
          Such familiar events, yet so astounding.  The Sovereign Creator enters Jerusalem knowing full well all the terrible betrayal, sorrow, humiliation, and pain that awaits Him.  So many beautiful and stunning paradoxes--Jesus enters triumphantly...yet humbly on a colt.  He enters with full omniscience...yet with complete submission to His Father.  He enters to joyful shouts of adoration...which will soon be screams of rejection.
          As John Piper says, He is both sovereign and merciful.  "What makes Christ so admirable and so different than all other persons is that He unites in Himself so many different qualities that in other people are contrary to each other.  We can imagine supreme sovereignty, and we can imagine tender hearted mercy.  But to whom do we look to combine, in perfect proportion, merciful sovereignty and sovereign mercy?...It's the harmony of things that seem in tension that makes Him glorious--'merciful and mighty,' as we sing.  We admire power more when it is merciful power. And we admire mercy more when it is mighty mercy."
         Such is our Savior...and there is none other.  He is both merciful and mighty, both full of grace and truth, both Servant and King.  
         A simple prayer for the next seven days--Father, might we walk with the Lord Jesus through the events of this final week of His life and see Him with fresh eyes, grateful hearts, and obedient wills.  Take us off of spiritual autopilot and enable us to experience and appreciate Jesus' sovereignty, power, love, forgiveness, grace, and mercy as never before.  And might our response be to love and worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords with all that we are.  Thank You that You are both merciful and mighty, both our sovereign Savior and our loving Lord.  In Jesus' name, Amen.
         To God be the glory.