In some ways life hasn’t treated you like you wish it had, right? All the childhood dreams have not been fulfilled, have they? Some friends have been lost along the way. Beloved family members are gone. Maybe family life hasn’t been quite what we’d hoped. The job’s not all we thought it would be. You name it. For all of us life hasn’t turned out just the way we had planned.

Life is not like the prosperity gospel preachers have promised.^[1] God has not delivered on what they promised. He has not seemed to answer all our prayers. We have all had loved ones die. 

In fact, we have a God who does things just the opposite from what we would expect God to do. This is what Martin Luther and his followers called the Theology of the Cross. Passion Sunday (Palm Sunday) especially illustrates this v…