Palm Sunday

"Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foul of a donkey." Zechariah 9:9

I was thinking this morning as I was sitting in my room reading my Bible and listening to the Beatles, about the Palm Sundays of my childhood and the ever present palm branches distributed amongst the sunday schoolers. I remember the reenactments back when the church was a lot smaller and we would have "Jesus" actually ride on a donkey through a parade of children wildly and excitedly waving their palm branches back and forth. It's funny to me now, how easy it was to get excited about Jesus back then. I've come to realize that "child-like faith" is truly a precious thing.
Now, Palm Sunday is like any other Sunday, except that it marks the start of Holy Week. We remember Jesus riding through the streets of Jerusalem, we remember the palms and the cloaks, and we read about the fulfillment of prophesy in Luke 19. But where is the excitement we once felt as children? Why didn't I wake up this morning shouting, "Hosanna! Glory in the highest!"

Here in Latin America, in the highly Catholic countries, the emphasis of Holy Week lies on Friday, on the crucifixion of Christ. Everything shuts down Friday and Saturday, but reopens again on Sunday. The focus is not placed on the resurrection. It's strange to be in a place where the Easter season is more of a formality than a celebration of remembrance. Yet being away from home, without family or a church to share in the joy of "He is risen, He's alive!" it is really easy to fall into that.

Being away from a "home church" environment for the first time in my life, I'm realizing that church is so much more than just getting fed a sermon once a week. It's this idea of community, of the body that is significant. I have been so blessed to have had real community for the majority of my life. Though it has changed and shifted over time, I've pretty much consistently had a group of believers that I was in fellowship with. Here, I am surrounded by fellow missionaries yet there lacks a unity that would tie us all together for genuine community, mainly due to the fact that we are all here for short amounts of time, and that few of us are actually staying on in Costa Rica.
I now have so much more appreciation for our brothers and sisters in places of the world, who are more or less alone in their faith. I heard a sermon once on how God created us to have a personal relationship with Jesus, but He never intended for it to be a private one. I want to encourage you all to remember and to pray for those of our faith who are forced to worship alone, especially during this Easter season. Pray for those missionaries and national believers in Asia, in the Middle East, and persecuted countries, that they would be encouraged to persevere in Christ.
I am really looking forward to once again being in a place that will allow me to truly develop community around me. Peru will be “home” for two years, and I long to really make it so. I hope and pray that the Lord will bless me with relationships that can be deeply developed. I hope to have fallen so in love with the people of Tarma that my heart will truly break when it comes time to leave. This is the community I desire. This is the “church” that I hope to once again attend.