Indeed, Jesus is our Father's answer to our Hosanna.
Lent exists because we are forgetful creatures. We forget how hungry we really are.
The Pharisee valued fasting and giving tithes, but could not find value in his fellow sinner.

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It’s the following that caught my attention this week. It seems especially appropriate to consider this Sunday, for Holy Week is designed to help Christians follow Jesus through his last and consequential days.
“That can’t be right”, I thought to myself as I flipped back and forth between two verses in my Bible.
Well it's simple really. I don't pray enough. I don't mean "enough" in the chronological sense like there is actually a right amount of prayer.
Every misty road and agonizing moment of indecision reminds us that life is not about becoming—or finding—perfection. Life is the One who is perfect.
The prophets of old were right: we do resemble what we revere. Our anthropology is hijacked by materialism. We become just stuff who consume stuff and hope to have enough stuff to make life worth it.
If everyone would just live by the rules, the world would be a better place, wouldn’t it?
If sin is not “imputed” or “reckoned to” the sinner then who is it reckoned to? The good news is that it’s reckoned to God
The texts compel us to deal with the “new thing” (Isa.43:18) that God is doing, namely, preaching the righteousness of faith to all nations. God’s judgment of justification is now for all. It has nothing to do with the flesh and everything to do with faith.
What he says in this parable has significance for us today, and needs to be preached. But the application is not direct and therefore should be done carefully.
Where contrition is evident, the conscience has already been prodded, piqued, finally terrified. More Law only serves to confirm the lie this person is already at risk of believing: that the last work of the conscience is also God’s last word. But God’s last word is the word of absolution, not the confirmation of the conscience’s testimony, but now its contradiction.
When we're under stress, when we're weighed down by responsibilities, and when we feel like nobody cares and no one can help us, we run to God.
One of my jobs in high school was helping local ranchers work cattle. We’d vaccinate, cut off horns, castrate, mark their ears, and brand them.