“They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’ And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, ‘Who is this?’ And the crowds said, ‘This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.’ And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, ‘It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer,” but you make it a den of robbers.’”
“And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant, and they said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,“Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise”?’ …Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the Scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”?'” Matthew 21:7-16,42
This passage displays the inverted thinking of man. Shouted hosannas to Jesus, the One they called a prophet, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, the royal transport of the time, voiced the crowd’s anticipation that He was deigned to become their earthly king. Jesus then, in righteous anger, threw over the tables of the dishonest traders in the temple, upending their practiced toleration of taking financial advantage of worshipers. The religious leaders, rather than marveling in gratitude at His merciful, wondrous miracles of healing, are indignant and critical, disturbed because their authority had been threatened. It is Jesus Who points out that the purest praise, the clearest understanding of Who He is, comes from the more innocent, unencumbered, less complicated minds of infants and children.
He overturns our thinking, too, if we allow Him. We get bent on certain thought-patterns and ride mental paths that travel in a lower, parallel universe from His lofty ways. We get intrigued with and beguiled by lesser, earthly, temporal things, emotions, desires, vantage points, and fail to ascend to His eternal and holy one. We dress ourselves in pride, touchiness, wearing badges of rights and identities and power that are dictated by this world and increasingly restrictive and difficult to discard. We end up rejecting what He has laid as our very foundation of truth and freedom, helpless to change apart from His mercy and renewal.
Lord, cleanse me. Invert my whole thought-process and any hint of perspective that is opposed to Yours, that I might whole-heartedly, with all my soul and might, bless You in the highest.
As the rain and snow 