As we prepare for Easter Sunday, our family read the story of the Triumphal Entry that occured on Palm Sunday many years ago, a week before Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. But we read it Monday night, not Sunday as me and my husband, Markus, had intended. You see on Sunday night, our kids requested to finish watching, “Avengers: Age of Ultron” as a family. Sometimes we push “Bible teaching time” aside for the sake of different kinds of family memories, knowing that God is in all that too. But I digress…

So Monday, we read the Triumphal Entry account in Luke 19. Jesus approached Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt, which meant He was ushering in peace. If He entered riding on a horse, like a typical King, He would’ve been declaring His desire to be a victorious war king against the oppressive Rome Israel sat under. The later is what the large crowd of gathered Jews in Jerusalem hoped He would do. But Jesus never tends to operate like we expect does He?

As Jesus rode into town, His faithful disciples, “…began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’ 

The bah-hum-bug-Pharisees (who saw Jesus as a threat to their religious popularity, so they never liked anything He did) then tell Jesus to shut up His disciples. But Jesus says that if His disciples go silent, “the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40).

I asked our family, stream of consciousness style, “So what would that look like? I’m totally curious. If the disciples quit praising Jesus, would the stones LITERALLY say what the disciples said? Or, I wonder, would the rocks cry out in their very own way? Would they shudder and crack and maybe even produce an earthquake?”

Then I remembered just that afternoon, I had studied a passage I am dramatically reading later in the week in our Good Friday service at church. It was in Matthew 27 where the reader gets to observe what happened once Jesus died. “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And earth shook and the rocks were split” (Matthew 27:51).

It hit me right then and there at our dinner table…the rocks literally CRIED OUT when Jesus died. The disciples hid because they feared those who killed Jesus would kill them too, so they for sure didn’t cry out. But holy smokes, the rocks did! And I doubt they cried out with tears of grief, but with shouts of joy! They proclaimed truth from Luke 19, that Jesus was the King, our King, who came in God’s name thirty-three years before. Peace was in heaven because Jesus became the bridge that all of us could walk across to get to there. Satan defeated. Death destroyed. Victory won (Hebrews 2:14)!

And the rocks cried out again again three days later! There was an earthquake when an angel descended from heaven and rolled back the stone to show that Jesus was no longer dead but alive. Glory in the highest! (Luke 19:38)

My stream of consciousness couldn’t stop, “So, when we hear about an earthquake on the news, are the stones crying out? Are they reminding us to, ‘…not forget to praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works we have seen’ (Luke 19:27)? Maybe they are crying out because we are not. Whoa.

I don’t know if our praises could silence the stones, like the disciple’s praises did, but I’d sure like to try. May we always proclaim God’s goodness and with a loud voice tell about what He’s done. When we see rocks or stones or hear about earthquakes, let’s remember to praise Him. May God continue to open our eyes to new truths as His Word breathes life into our souls. And let’s always choose to take our kids along for the ride!

Fun fact: Did you know that there are 500,000 earthquakes every year worldwide? (That’s 1369 everyday! Talk about some cryin’ rocks!) 100,000 of those can be felt and 100 of them cause damage (earthquake.usgs.gov).

The featured picture at the beginning of this blog is of me and my sister, Callie, at the top of the “Twin Sisters” peak in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado at 11,427′. Yes, I praised the Lord at the top of that mountain…for His majestic views, and for helping me make it up there in one piece!