A friend reminded me today that this beautiful Sunday is Palm Sunday. I love Palm Sunday! Growing up in Sunday School it was such a fun day at church of celebration and adoration of Jesus. Most of you know the story of Palm Sunday if you have had any experience in church life at all.
What seemed to strike me most through the years was how very quickly the same people who adoringly welcomed Jesus into the city of Jerusalem with praise and palms, were the ones who were screaming and shouting the next week “crucify him!” How? Why? What did he do so horrible that one week they were celebrating him and the next they were crucifying him?
Those questions are not necessarily to be answered or resolved. They don’t really cause me angst because I know the whole context of Jesus’ time on earth.
What I am writing about today is the concept that the human heart can and does so often turn on a dime. When I was young and had not acquired the scars I now wear, I did not have much empathy for such humans who could be so fickle… who see their love and adoration turn on a dime. But as with so many things, the longer I live the more I know exactly how it feels to be so very human. To be bound by the human frailty. To be so very capable of turning on a dime… my heart, my mind.
Just some things I am meditating on during this lovely Sunday, and will continue to meditate on through this next week… through to Good Friday, and finally Easter. Thank goodness there is One who knows my heart even when I can’t always make sense of it!