Today's Devotion:

The ransomed of the Lord will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

(The Holy Bible : New International Version. electronic ed. Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1996, c1984, S. Is 51:11) Isaiah prophesies the return of the exiled Jews to Judah and Jerusalem in joyous triumph.

Today's Comments: Yesterday, we celebrated Jesus' triumphal return to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The descendants of those who returned to Jerusalem from exile now celebrated the return of their Messiah King into their midst. They spread their clothing and threw palm branches in front of Jesus Christ, Son of David, to celebrate his triumphal entry into Jerusalem in, perhaps, much the same manner as their ancestors might have re-entered Jerusalem years before. And yet, one week later, those same Jews, whose hopes lay in Christ their King, called for His crucifixion by the Roman authorities. It was if they had never learned their lessons of the exile. Once again, they had turned away from the Lord, as they had done so many times before.

Yesterday, as the palms turned to the passion of our Lord, in the Palm Sunday liturgy, we sang the Chorale O Sacred Head Sore Wounded, set to Johann Sebastian Bach's music. One verse particularly grabbed my attention:

What language shall I borrow

to thank thee, dearest friend,

for this thy dying sorrow,

thy pity without end?

Oh, make me thine forever!

and should I faining be,

Lord, let me never, never,

outlive my love for thee.