Palm Sunday

Four years ago, I was teaching 7th Grade Sunday School with a very good friend.  We enjoyed teaching together no end, and we really loved what we were doing.  This particular year, the Education Director told us as we arrived that the kids would be reenacting Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  The younger kids would line the hallway with palm branches, and lay cloaks on the floor.  Our class was to put a kid on a donkey and roll him down the hall.  The donkey turned out to be a wooden cut out of a donkey, held onto a stack of building blocks piled on top of a Radio Flyer wagon. Everything was held together with Bungee Cords.

Looking at the precarious pile of stuff,  my friend and I looked at each other and muttered "What could go wrong?"

The appointed time arrived.  We had a volunteer to ride on the donkey cart - and the rest of the class volunteered to pull/push him down the hallway.  Let's call the volunteer on the cart "Andy".

Andy perched on top of the blocks high atop the wagon,  and the kids began pulling and pushing him down the hallway.  The little kids enthusiastically waved their palm branches.

And then, the wagon hit the first bump as it went over the first of the cloaks laid on the ground.  The blocks began to shift and Andy stopped smiling.

Every time they hit a bump, the blocks shifted a little bit more, the little kids cheered a little bit louder, Andy held on a little tighter, and his friends moved a little bit faster.

By the time they reached the end of the hall, the little kids were screaming in delight, and Andy was holding on for dear life. 

As the kids stopped, the sound of our laughter resonated through the hallways, and Andy rolled off of the donkey cart, onto the floor and shouted "Land!  Sweet Land!" as he hugged the ground.