I don't know if you have ever lost someone very close and dear to you. There is really no adequate way to describe the clash of emotions. The trauma of a loss like this can tear at the very core of your being. You want to be left alone, but being alone with your thoughts is its own torment. At night you long for the temporary escape of sleep, which if found, plays the cruel hoax of letting you awaken for an instant as though all were normal only to have the gut-wrenching reality of loss engulf you again.

I don't know about you, but as I pause for a few brief moments to get my bearings in a fast paced life, it is hard to believe that Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Resurrection (Easter) Sunday are upon us. These most holy and notable of Christian holidays are only a couple of weeks away.

I am reminded of the days leading up to our Lord Jesus' Triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was six days before the Jewish Passover, a busy time of preparation to celebrate the Lord's deliverance from Egypt more than a thousand years earlier. It was also a sober and holy time of anticipating the paschal lamb's sacrifice for the sin of the people.