Thoughts on Palm Sunday

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your king is coming to you;

righteous and having salvation is he,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey. —Zechariah 9:9

 

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written… —John 12;12-14

 

True story…

 

Many years ago, when I was in high school, my father decided to give his four-year-old grandson, David Wichern, a special birthday gift: a donkey colt. So, thinking the little animal might be injured in a horse trailer, we loaded him into the back seat of my father’s 1948 Mercury convertible, put the top down and set off for Memphis, Tennessee.

 

I kid you not: The little donkey sat bolt upright the entire trip, like a proper passenger, looking all around him, clearly enthralled by the scenery. It was fun and games until we drove through towns along the way and were greeted with guffaws and gales of laughter. The donkey loved the journey; I, on the other hand, a self-absorbed teenager, was mortified. 

 

When we presented the donkey to David he wailed, “But Pawpaw, I wanted a real horse,” which meant we had to haul the little beast all the way back to Dallas. It was like running a gauntlet. I bear the marks of that humiliation to this day.

 

In ancient days, the monuments reveal, kings rode “real horses”— powerful, 19 hands, 2,000-pound war horses similar to Clydesdale, Percheron, or Belgian draft horses. But Israel’s Messiah would make his grand entrance on a pint-sized, flop-eared donkey—a ludicrous sight, more worthy of side-splitting laughter than acclaim. 

 

We should note—for it is very important—that our Lord brought salvation to the world through humiliation and loss: “By dying he dying slew.” His lowly actions are a daily reminder that the weapons of our warfare are not the self-regarding aggressions of this world, but meekness, humility and self-denial.

 

By weakness and defeat, 

He won the meed (reward) and crown; 

Trod all our foes beneath His feet 

By being trodden down. —Simon Gandy

 

David H. Roper

3.27.21

 

A “Woke” Church

 

“Do not be deceived: ‘Evil company corrupts good habits.’[1] Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame” (1 Corinthians 15:33,34).

 

I ate my Cheerios this morning to the beat of an old Bob Dylan song. (Carolyn was listening to Dylan’s album, “Slow Train Coming.”)

 

When you gonna wake up; when you gonna wake up; 
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

 

“Good words for us,” Carolyn said. 

 

Counterfeited philosophies have polluted all your thoughts;
Karl Marx has got you by the throat…

When you gonna wake up; when you gonna wake up;
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain.

I thought of Paul’s letter to the folks at Corinth, immersed in a culture very much like ours: “Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools. Gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules.” Faced with a confusion like ours, Paul called for “wokeness,” long before the current woke-craze corrupted our “habits.” 

 

His answer? Personal righteousness and the proclamation of the gospel. This has always been the primary mission of the Church and the final answer to all that ails us. 

 

And so we gather as God’s people to learn what it means to be God-like and we disperse to show His likeness to others. Why? Because, more’s the pity, “some do not have the knowledge of God.” 

 

Equality? Justice? Secondary goals on our agenda. What good would it do to liberate our kinsmen if, in the end, they have no knowledge of God?  

 

There’s a man up on a cross whose been crucified for you;

Believe in His power—that’s all you gotta do.

When you gonna wake up; when you gonna wake up,

When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

 

David Roper

3.25.21

 

Reverse It

"Don't  be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21).

"Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing" (1 Peter 3:8,9). 

George MacDonald has a thoughtful commentary on these texts: “There is no nobility, no dignity in an evil retort of any kind; evil is evil when returned as much as when given; the only shining thing is good—and the most shining thing is good for evil" (A Rough Shaking).

Years ago, a friend gave me some of the best advice I ever received: "When someone strikes out at you with an evil act or accusation, don’t curse it; don’t rehearse it; don’t nurse it; reverse  it." Return the curse with a blessing.

If our detractors are wrong about us we can respectfully correct them, but even in those cases in which we are wrongly accused the nobler part is to say little or nothing at all and always to return a blessing. We’ll always feel better about ourselves if we do. Perhaps that's what Peter meant when he said that we're called to give a blessing that we may inherit one.  

It's never easy to take this narrow road, but it’s the one Jesus took (Acts 8:32). Lord, “give us the power to let our rag-rights go" (GM).

David Roper

3.21.21

The Help That God Supplies

"Hasten to help Me; save Me from the sword (death)You answered Me.” —Psalm 22:20,21

 

In this poem, David describes Jesus' crucifixion with starling precision, a thousand years before the Cross. But more startling is the cry, "Save me,” and this assurance: “You (God) answered me." Yet Jesus suffered and died on the cross. 

 

The author of Hebrews repeats this odd juxtaposition: "(Jesus) in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death...was heard because of His godly fear" (Hebrews 5:7). Jesus was heard, yet he suffered and died on the cross.

Does God hear us when we call? Of course he does, but the help he supplies is not always deliverance from trouble. 

God’s help may come in the form of grace to pass through the trial with calm repose, a rest that tranquilizers, relaxation techniques, positive thinking, Zen and other mystical forms of contemplation cannot duplicate. Jesus called it, “my peace,” an inexplicable peace that defies rational explanation (Philippians 4:7).

Lyricist Scott Krippayne put it this way…

Sometimes God calms the storm

With a whispered peace be still

He can settle any sea,

But it doesn't mean He will.

Sometimes He holds us close,

And lets the wind and waves go wild;

Sometimes He calms the storm,

And at other times His child.

David Roper

3/18/21

 

The Man Who Lived Too Long

"Then Isaiah said, 'This is the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing which He has spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees or go backward ten degrees?' And Hezekiah answered, 'It is an easy thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees; no, but let the shadow go backward ten degrees'" (2Kings 20:19,20). 

I HATE DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME! Time isn't supposed to be messed with. Standard time is time as God intended it to be. 

I think Judah's King Hezekiah would agree...

Hezekiah was told he would be healed of a terminal disease and would be given fifteen additional years of life, but, weak in faith, he insisted on a sign. The prophet Isaiah first proposed that the shadow on his sun dial move forward as a sign, but Hezekiah insisted that the shadow move backward.

Right, I thought. Fall back: an extra hour to sleep, or in Hezekiah's case, extra years to live. 

Unfortunately, Hezekiah squandered his bonus years: He showed Israel’s treasures to a Babylonian probe, a vanity that led to her captivity 140 years later. Furthermore, he fathered a son, Manasseh, a terrible man, who took Judah over a cliff and into ruin. Hezekiah's epitaph could have read: "Here lies a man who lived too long."

Sometimes I wonder: Will I too ”end before I finish, or finish and not finish well” and know…

The darkness of a spirit

grown mean and small,

fruit shriveled on the vine,

bitter to the taste of my companions,

burden to be borne by those brave few

who love me still…

No, Lord. Let the fruit grow lush and sweet,

A joy to all who taste;

Spirit-sign of God at work,

stronger, fuller, brighter at the end. —Robertson McQuilkin, “Home Before Dark"

It all depends on Him.

David Roper

11.7.20

Hereafter

"As for me, I know that my redeemer is living and 'after this' he will raise me up out of dust. In the 'hereafter,' when my (leprous) skin is removed and I'm no longer in this body, I shall see God—I shall gaze at him for myself—and I will see one who is my friend. Oh, how my heart yearns for this" (Job 19:25-27).

This text was in my Lenten reading this morning and the translation is my effort to better understand it. It’s Job's Great Confession, "wherein he himself plants the flag of victory above his own grave" (D.J. Wiseman).

"You can write this indelibly in a book, or carve it ineradicably in stone," Job insists (19:24). "This is what I know and what my heart yearns for: Someday I shall shed this pain-plagued body and see my Old Friend face to face.

Oh, how our hearts yearn for this. 

David Roper

3.13.21

PS: There’s an old joke about the author that asked his friend, “Have you read my last book?”—to which his friend replied, “I sure hope so.” Well, I may have written my last book. It’s entitled Walking in Grace and Glory, 90 days in the Psalms. It can be ordered from Amazon, or the Our Daily Bread site: odb.org 

What We’re Here For

Carolyn and I have been watching a British television series about a stolid, plainspoken Chief Inspector and his brash, young assistant who protect and serve a small village in Northumberland. It’s a murder mystery set in 1964 with some significant asides about moral integrity.

In one scene an elderly couple, who own a small pig farm, agree to take in a seriously disturbed, homeless teenager. When asked how they could accept this challenge at their age and with their meagre resources the old man quietly replied, “It’s what we’re here for.”

 

Love and heart-kindness. It’s what we’re here for.

David Roper

3.9.21

Love Never Ends

“Love never ends..." (1Corinthians 13:8).

 

Life plays a dirty trick on us as we age: The verbal skills we relied on, the knowledge we spent a lifetime acquiring, the facts and figures we once could retrieve on demand—all these skills and acquisitions begin to fade away. "I don’t remember" becomes our response to most questions, the answers to which we knew just a short time ago. 

 

We become dull, inarticulate, fumbling for words to express the tangle of thoughts in our minds. We reach for a fact or a memory, but it flits away and perches just beyond our reach. We're tongue-tied in the present of bright young minds. We feel that our treasured role with family and friends has come to an end.

 

But love never ends. We may not be able to dazzle our friends with our breadth of knowledge and witty repartee, but we can show a sincere interest in the things they’re interested in. We can ask a question and we can listen. And then we can ask another question and listen some more. We can show others that we care. 

 

“Love never ends,” or so it is written—the one thing we’ll be doing forever. Why not get started right now?  

 

David Roper

3.4.21

Wasteful Grace

 

Gloriously wasteful, O my Lord, art thou!

Sunset faints after sunset into the night,

Splendorously dying from thy window-sill—

 

—George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul

 

“From [Jesus’] fullness we have all received, grace in exchange for grace” (John 1:16)

 

“David, quick, come look,” Carolyn calls from the kitchen. I trundle in to see why she’s so excited. 

 

Our kitchen window faces west and Carolyn is gazing through it at a spectacular Idaho sunset. Orange, red, gray, purple and colors I have no name for, splashed across the horizon in kaleidoscopic display. God with his paint pots and brushes, at it again. 

 

“Hurry,” Carolyn says, “get the camera,” but by the time I find my iPhone (which is never where I put it) the sunset has faded away, “splendorously dying” from God’s window-sill, a one time show of extravagant beauty, never to be repeated, but matched by the next peerless, made-to order-display.

 

God’s grace is like his sunsets: uniquely drawn up for each particular day. I wonder, then, what once-in-a-lifetime display of goodness God has in mind for you and me this day? 

 

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. 

 

David H. Roper

3.3.21