This coming Sunday will be Palm Sunday. Always a day of great celebration and rejoicing. Churches that are blessed with children use them as part of the processional march, waving palms and recreating what we think that original entrance into Jerusalem looked like. Even churches that usually don't have children, find them somehow and do the same. This is a Psalm that sets the stage in our minds, hearts, and spirits for that coming celebration. It begins with our need to always to give thanks to God. God is good, all the time (And as we have learned, "and all the time, God is good!). God's love is steadfast, it is eternal, it never ends! We should right now, right where we are, startle someone by saying out loud, "God's steadfast love endures forever."
The psalmist also set the stage for Jesus' entry by writing what God placed on his heart; "Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord." Righteousness is not a physical location as it is a spiritual one. Being right with God is righteousness. Those who love God need to open the gates of their hearts to allow the Lord in again. As Jesus entered Jerusalem, He was not necessarily entering a righteous place, but He was entering into the place that needed Him whether they knew it then or not. The psalmist says from his heart that by answering his prayers, God has become his salvation. The "stone" that the "builders" rejected has become the chief cornerstone, referring to the place that Jesus would hold in both the hearts of those who rejected Him and those who accepted Him. The builders were the so-called righteous of His day; they rejected Jesus. There was no way Jesus could be the expected One from God. Those who accepted Him knew that Jesus was indeed, in all respects, the chief cornerstone of fruitful and abundant life. All of this, the psalmist says, was God's doing, and "it is marvelous in our eyes." That day when we realize that and accept that, becomes the day that the Lord has made, one in which we are to rejoice and be glad in it. We also realize the need continues to God to save us and so we join in the prayer of others who are asking for God's saving grace to be upon them. We need from God success as God defines it. Indeed, to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior is to receive as blessed, the One who has come in the name of the Lord. God has indeed given to us formerly in the dark light, and so we join that festive procession with branches from where God found us right to the altar of the Lord. How can we not give thanks to He who is good, whose steadfast and eternal love last forever?
Say it again, "God's steadfast love endures forever!"
PRAYER: Indeed, loving God, Your steadfast love endures forever! May we live our lives in ways that say so! Amen!
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord!
Eradio Valverde
