Despite the current weather conditions around here (SNOW, SNOW, SNOW), it is actually Easter week. I can’t remember the last time there was snow on Palm Sunday in Virginia (or any other state I’ve lived in for that matter).
While snow may be a unique way to kick off Easter week, I found a more Biblical way to kick it of – in the Bible of all places!
Kick off Easter week with children. And I don’t mean just doing a traditional Easter egg hunt, which is nice and all. I mean children singing praise to God.
You see, when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey in what is now known as “The Triumphal Entry”, people waved palm branches (representing victory as well as eternal life). This is the event that Christians traditionally celebrate to start Easter week. He then ransacked the commerce mall that had been set up in the temple, claiming that the temple was a house of prayer, not of thieves (Matthew 21:1-12).
The next thing that happens caught my attention as I was reading it this morning (Matthew 21:14-16):
“14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.
16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.
“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise’?”
Wow. The ones who were shouting praise to Jesus in the temple were children. And Jesus stuck up for them by saying that this is what God had promised (in Psalm 8:2).
This is why I love being a minister to children. They have so much energy and joy that they actually minister to me. They are the real “worship leaders” in the church. They are the ones who teach us how to worship and praise God: The innocence of their hearts. The purity of their faith. The joy of their song. The sincerity of their praise.
Start off Easter week by singing and praying with a child out there. Ask them to pray for you. Ask them to lead you in a song of worship. They are, after all, ordained to do so by God!
