Palm Sunday is the day we commemorate the triumphal entrance of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem. (Tragically, some of the very people who hailed him with such enthusiasm were also the ones who shouted for his crucifixion five short days later.)

But we miss some of the great significance of Palm Sunday if we focus only on the events of two thousand years ago. While those events constitute a historical fact, the reality of the Palm Sunday experience is more than that which took place many years ago.

The people of Jerusalem shouted at the approach of the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We in our day can shout with joy that the One who comes in the name of the Lord, Christ Jesus, comes to us each day. Christ Jesus did not come once in a historical setting, never to come again. Instead, he came once in this historical setting, but comes to us again and again in the everydays of our lives, in dozens of both subtle and blatant ways, in a multitude of forms and appearances. For Christ is the One who comes. He is the one who comes to us again and again, claiming us as God’s own, forgiving us, cleansing us, making us whole, and giving us both life abundant and life everlasting.

While we, like those who shouted on Palm Sunday, can rain our blessings down upon the Christ, it is the Lord God who has blessed him above all others. It is the Lord God who has enabled Christ Jesus to enter our lives to give us new birth. It is the Lord God who, through the Christ who comes to us, claims us as God’s own. So may we greet the One who comes with shouts of “Hosanna in the highest!”

Excerpt from: WordAlive Copyright © 2012 by Abingdon Press.