I remember my mother once saying—quoting her father—that Easter Sunday is a lot like heaven. Perhaps it is the closest thing to it that we will ever experience here upon the Earth.

I cannot prove that statement Biblically, but I have attempted to meditate upon it through the years, and I think there is much truth in it.

Growing up, I was part of a church tradition that gave great prominence to Easter Sunday—which some strongly prefer to call Resurrection Sunday—and all of the events leading up to it. By the time we got to Holy Week—which I now prefer to call …

Of course there will be hard places. What of it? To choose ease rather than effort is to choose slow decay. (Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China and Thailand, 1901–1957)

Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

As the bamboo curtain descended over China in 1950, Isobel Kuhn fled her home in the Yunnan province with her six-year-old son. They climbed over the ragged peaks of the Hpi Maw Pass into northern Myanmar [then Burma]. Her beloved Lisu people left behind, Kuhn…

As Easter draws near, the Christian calendar presents us with a sequence of world-altering events—Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and later Pentecost. Each day tells a part of the greatest story ever told, and it begins with Palm Sunday: the moment Jesus Christ enters Jerusalem, hailed as a king, setting into motion the fulfillment of divine promises.

In Luke 19:28–44, we find the account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. But to fully grasp what’s happening, we need to step back and understand the broader picture.

The cosmic civil war

From the beginning of…