The day after Christmas, your reading hands you Palm Sunday: your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey.

Zechariah also coins one of Scripture's strangest and strongest phrases: prisoners of hope. People still locked in a hard place, already promised release. If the holiday left you somewhere between joy and ache, that phrase has room for you. Read on.

Two processions ride through today's reading. Babylon parades in on a beast, dressed in scarlet and gold, dazzling and doomed. Jerusalem's king arrives on a donkey, lowly, and His kingdom is the one that reaches from sea to sea. Every generation has to pick a parade, and the glitter never stops being persuasive.

Prisoners of hope is the name for people who chose the donkey while still living in Babylon's neighborhood. Held, but not by the pit; bound, but to a promise. Whatever waterless place this season finds you in, God's word over you is restoration, and His arithmetic is twice as much. Return to your fortress. Hope is one.