Approaching Palm Sunday

I thought this reading appropriate for the time before Palm Sunday. One can only wonder what that first Palm Sunday crowd in Jerusalem had been praying for and what they thought they saw before them. And then compare all this, in light of what their actions would be later in the week. Many in the crowd were no doubt prattling about like children asking for a morsel of bread. Many must have been praying for a military minded conquering Messiah who would give them their kingdom of this world. Even that prayer for a misdirected morsel was heard, but they were given so much more than all of that. More than a morsel for just today, they were given the very bread of life...

AELW3:159

"Yet we must learn that we should pray even in the most desperate evils and hope for the unexpected and the impossible. And it is for this reason that these examples of the holy patriarchs are set before us. They show that the patriarchs, too, were afflicted by sundry cares and trials and yet received more good than they either understood or had been bold enough to ask for.

For we have a God who is able to give more than we understand or ask for. Even though we do not know what we should ask for and how, nevertheless the Spirit of God, who dwells in the hearts of the godly, sighs and groans for us within us with inexpressible groanings and also procures inexpressible and incomprehensible things.

It is profitable to teach these things, because even though we begin to believe and to pray, our hearts are nevertheless deterred by the magnitude of the things for which we are asking and then also by the Person of the Listener. Therefore these accounts incite our hearts to open our mouths toward God and to pray with confidence, without being deterred by the fact that we who are nothing are approaching Him who is everything.

James and John prayed that one should sit at the left of Christ and the other at His right, but He told them (Matt. 20:22): “You do not know what you are asking.” Yet He heard their ever so foolish request, but He did so in a manner that was far different from what they themselves had thought. For they are not at the left or at the right of some worldly king; they are princes and judges of the entire world on the Last Day.

Therefore if we want to describe our prayers, they are really nothing else than the stammering of children who ask for bread or a morsel before meals. For we do not know what we should ask for. The things we ask for are beyond our comprehension, and He who bestows them is greater; and the things are also too great for our narrow hearts to be able to understand."