After Holy week…

The donkey awakened, his mind still savoring the afterglow of the most exciting day of his life. Never before had he felt such a rush of pleasure and purpose.
He pridefully plodded into town and found a group of people by the well. “I’ll show myself to them,” he thought.
But they didn’t notice him. They went on drawing their water and paid him no mind.
“Throw your garments down,” he said crossly. “Don’t you know who I am?”
They just looked at him in amazement. Someone slapped him across the tail and ordered him to move along.
“Miserable heathens!” he muttered to himself. “I’ll just go to the market where the good people are. They will remember me.”
But the same thing happened.
No one paid any attention to the donkey as he strutted down the main street in front of the market place.
“The palm branches! Where are the palm branches?” he shouted.
“Yesterday, you threw palm branches!”
Hurt and confused, the donkey returned home to his mother.
“Foolish child,” she said gently.
“Don’t you realize that without him, you are just an ordinary donkey?”

Source: Wayne Rice, Illustrations, Youth Specialties

Lord, without you we are ordinary donkeys.
Thank you that there are many more Palm Sundays to praise you, and Resurrection Sundays to celebrate faith in your immeasurable power, hope in your trustworthy promises, and love in the gathering of believers in your presence.
Help us not to neglect you.
We bow our knees before the Father, from whom every family on heaven and earth is named, that according to the riches of your glory, you may grant us to be strengthened with power through your Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith – that we being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God.
Now to God who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.