The King on a Borrowed Donkey

You know how, when you want something so much, you start to picture it? You make a little movie of it, deep inside you, and play it over and over.

For a long, long time, the people of God had been picturing a King.

They had waited years and years. They had waited through being hungry. They had waited through soldiers marching in their streets. And the whole time, they passed an old promise back and forth, careful, the way you carry a candle with both hands so the wind won't blow it out.

A King is coming. A King is coming to save us.

When you wait that long, you start to decide what your hero will look like. The people pictured a King up high on a great war horse. A King with a sword. A King who would come thundering in and knock their enemies flat.

That was the hero they kept watching the road for.

And then, one bright morning, somebody came.

Not on a horse.

On a donkey. A small, borrowed donkey, one that had never been ridden before, its little feet stepping soft on the dusty road.

Jesus was sitting on it.

A donkey? You might think that is not how a King comes. But it was. Do you remember the promise about a king on a borrowed donkey? Long, long before, God had whispered it to a prophet, and the prophet wrote it down so no one would ever forget. Look. Your King is coming to you. Gentle. Riding on a donkey.

God remembered. Every single word.

So Jesus came exactly the way the promise said. Gentle, on a donkey's back, come to save his people, not to knock them flat.

And the people could not help themselves. They pulled the coats right off their backs and laid them on the road, a soft path for the donkey's feet. They tore green branches from the trees and waved them like flags. They shouted until their voices climbed up into the sky.

Hosanna! Save us! Blessed is the One who comes!

They were glad. Oh, they were so glad.

There was something they could not quite see yet. They were cheering for a King who had come to save them in a way far bigger than the little movie in their heads. He had come to save them from more than soldiers. From the dark, heavy thing inside every heart. From being lost. From being far from home, when home was the very thing they were made for.

This King did not come up high, to make people afraid of him. He came down low. Close to the ground. Close enough to touch. The kind of King a small child could walk right up to and put a hand on his knee.

He rode in through the gates. He looked at everything, slow and long, the way you look at someone you have loved for a very long time. And then, because the day was over, he went out again.

But he would be back.

The gentle King on the borrowed donkey kept his ancient promise that day. He really came. The rescue the people had whispered about for years was here now, walking soft up the dusty road, close enough to touch.

And it had only begun to show them how good it was going to be.