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05/10/2026

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03/29/2026

Every year I’m stopped in the same place.

Come with me for a minute to the streets of Jerusalem.

The city is alive with expectations of His arrival.

They’ve seen and heard about Jesus raising Lazarus just days before.

And they wait for Him, believing this would be their victory. That He would do what they expected a victor to do.

Meanwhile, the disciples have already brought Him the donkey and are making their way down the Mt of Olives to the city gates. Praising God for all the miracles they had seen.

And this is where I stop.

I can’t help it. It just grabs me every time.

Jesus, as He drew nearer to the city, weeps.

He weeps.

Every year I stop here.
And every year I picture His face.

The tears of the Messiah making paths down those dust covered cheeks. The tears of our Saviour. Pouring out.

It takes my breath away.

I picture the heartache He feels as He peers ahead. Seeing souls He loves and hearts He longs for—harden against Him.

They’ve decided He should look and be a certain way. But when He isn’t, they turn on Him.

The ones about to welcome Him with celebration will soon spit on Him.

They’ll do terrible things. Shameful and horrific things to this King. The One weeping for them.

In my spirit this morning I just wanted to scream back into history at the folks on the street. I want them to know about their weeping Saviour.

Perched on a donkey, his tears pouring out for them as His heart breaks.

But then I realize I’ve done this too.

I’ve held my own expectations of Him. Celebrated Him when I welcomed Him to rescue me. But when the rescue didn’t go as I had expected, turned on Him too.

How my heart has hardened because I decided ahead of time what He should do. Who He should be. How He should act.

We have the benefit of knowing the full story here.

We know His rescue is bigger and better than they can imagine.

A God ordained rescue is always better.

But they didn’t know. Not yet anyway.

And so I’m here this morning with racing heart. Realizing those tears are for me, too.

And for you.

Our Saviour and Redeemer doesn’t always do as we expect. He doesn’t always show up the way we’d hoped.

But He always comes with more love than we can ever understand.

Love that weeps over our hardened hearts.

Love so gracious and patient it walks toward us even when we reject Him.

And there He is, coming through the gates. His tear stained face revealing His heart — so full of love and so broken in sorrow.

Palm branches or betrayal—He came for both.

For the ones who welcome Him and the ones who turn away.

Still… He comes.

Not always as the King we imagined.

But always as the Savior we need.

Today as we welcome Him, May we welcome Him as He is. Not as we expect Him to be.

May we notice His face. May we notice (like, really notice) the tears He’s wept with us on His mind.

He is so much more (bigger, better, more awesome!) than we can ever (ever) imagine.

Welcome Jesus! We see You. We love You Jesus!

Hosanna. 🌿

“And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭19‬:‭41‬-‭42‬ ‭ESV‬‬

03/17/2026

I didn’t sleep that night. Not really. You don’t just go from a Roman death sentence to walking out into the sunlight like nothing happened and then drift off like it was a normal day. Every time I close my eyes I hear it again. My name. Shouted. Chosen. Not because I was innocent, not because I deserved anything, just…chosen anyway.

I know what I was supposed to do that day. I’ve seen enough crucifixions to understand how the story ends. You don’t walk away from that hill. Rome doesn’t change its mind halfway through. And yet here I am, breathing air that should have run out yesterday, with hands that should have been nailed to wood instead of hanging here like I don’t quite know what to do with them.

And I can’t get Him out of my head.

I didn’t know Him. I knew of Him like everyone else did. The teacher. The one people argued about. The one who apparently made the religious leaders nervous enough to want Him gone. But I did not expect Him to look like that. Not angry. Not scrambling to save Himself. Not even trying to argue His way out of it. Just…steady. Like He knew exactly what was happening and wasn’t surprised by any of it. Which is deeply unsettling when you are watching a man walk straight into your death like it belongs to Him.

I keep telling myself it was just the crowd. People get loud, they get emotional, they make terrible decisions. That is all this was. Noise. Chaos. Bad timing. Right name shouted at the right moment. That is how I got out. That is how He didn’t.

Except that explanation doesn’t hold up very well once things get quiet.

Because I have spent my life around men who fight to stay alive. Men who claw and curse and bargain for one more breath. I have been one of them. You do not just accept a cross. You do not just stand there while people decide your fate like you are already beyond it. Unless you believe something I clearly do not understand.

And then the rumors start.

At first it is just whispers moving through the streets. Women saying the tomb is empty. Disciples acting like something impossible just happened. Guards suddenly not wanting to talk about their night shift. And I know what dead looks like. I know Rome does not mess that part up. Dead is final. Dead is the end.

Except apparently it wasn’t.

And now I have a problem I did not have yesterday. Yesterday I just had to live with the fact that another man died in my place. That is heavy, sure, but at least it makes sense. People die. Sometimes you get spared. End of story.

But if He did not stay dead…

Then this was not just a trade.

This was not just a crowd making a bad call between two men. This means He went there knowing exactly what He was doing. This means I was not an accident. I was not a lucky break. I was part of it.

And I do not know what to do with that.

Because I was ready to die. That story fit me. I understood it. It matched everything I had done and everything I thought I deserved.

This one does not.

This one says I am walking around with a life that was handed back to me by a man who chose to take my place…and then walked out of His own grave like death did not get the final say.

And that means my freedom is not random.

It has a name attached to it.

And if I am honest…that might be the part people miss when they tell my story.

Because it is easy to shake your head at the crowd and think you would have chosen differently. It is easy to look at me and think I was the exception, the worst one, the obvious wrong choice.

But the truth is…I am not the exception.

I am the example.

We all stand there in one way or another, guilty in ways we would rather not list out loud, hoping somehow we are not the ones who have to pay for it. And the uncomfortable, beautiful, completely undeserved truth is that the story does not end with us getting what we deserve.

It ends with Someone else stepping forward and taking it instead.

We like to think we would have chosen Jesus.

But the reality is…we also are Barabbas.

And we are the ones who walked free.

01/31/2026

All services are canceled tomorrow 2/1/26.
We will be live at 9:30am hopefully.
We love you all. Stay safe and warm.