March 29, 2026 - How Finding Hope in Life's Greatest Struggles Sustains Us - Pastor Paul Vallee

Dan Schmidt writes in Unexpected Wisdom: Tragically, hope is a weak word these days, meaning little more than what we feel... What of the one who has just learned of cancer in his child, or whose parents have developed a wasting disease, or whose job has been abruptly and callously terminated? ...when physical troubles and spiritual attacks stack up like cords of wood, what does hope mean then? Hope sustains you in the welter of struggles that scurry through the heart and mind like tadpoles in a pond. It draws you into the new day and carries you through the many days that follow. …We think of the prophets as writing about the future, and they do. But their interests rest less with helping us chart events in a nice, neat way than with assisting us through the minefields of life to live for God.  They assure us that God is sufficient for what we are going through now and for what is likely to smack us later. They persist in saying that the one we cling to deserves our trust, and that hope in God is legitimate and beneficial. ...With their wonderful dreams and tales of better times, they offer a vision of life far different from current experience. Prophets see what is not as though it were and invite others to adopt their perspective despite contrary evidence. They offer hope, but they do so by way of a challenge: believe that a power as awesome and far-reaching as Assyria’s will one day soon be little more than rubble, and you are likely to believe anything.” That’s it, the things that are, will one day no longer be! Whatever your challenge, whatever seems beyond your ability, and worse, is still not big enough or bad enough to overcome what God ultimately intends for each of us. Our problem is that our expectations are often shattered by something greater and better than what we anticipate. That’s the story of Easter week.  The Jewish people were hoping that Roman rule was coming to an end as they worshiped their king, but the reality was that His throne was a cross that would deliver them and us from something far greater than earthly oppression. Sin and death were about to deliver a crushing blow. Jesus was about to provide us with eternal life. As we celebrate these days, the significance of Easter week, I want to look at the prophetic picture and the background of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Today is the day we know as Palm Sunday.  What was transpiring in that moment of time? What were the aspirations of the people? What was significant about this moment? How does that impact us? What should this day mean to us?    To really gain insight into this moment in the life of Jesus, we need to go back in time to the prophet Zechariah, who prophesied about the coming King. In that context, I want to look at Psalm Sunday today. In Zechariah 9:9-17, we find the fulfillment of prophecy as quoted by Matthew when Jesus came into Jerusalem that day, two thousand years ago, to establish his kingdom, through his conquest over sin and death. But what was happening when Zechariah first communicated this message of hope to God’s people, and how did that message get lost in translation so that so many missed the message? How is it that we can still miss the significance of this message today? Zechariah was preaching after the exile. Many had returned, but many remained in the land of exile.