I love playing double solitaire.

I remember many late nights at the living room table with friends and relatives dealing the cards and racing to lay mine down faster than my opponent. I was a relentless competitor having no mercy on other players - even my own grandmother!

It's no wonder that when I reached my teens fewer and fewer people wanted to play cards with me. They knew that winning, for me, was everything. They knew I would sacrifice even close relationships just to win.

Thankfully as I've grown I've discovered what most of us know instinctively, that the point of card games, athletic competitions, in fact, the achievement of every position and the obtaining of every possession, is not winning or getting, but the enhancement relationships. Winning games, winning races, winning arguments, falls a far second to the enhancement and preservation of relationships.

Palm Sunday is God's way of showing us that winning was not the point. The defeat and failure of Christ’s crucifixion was the precursor to the enhancement of relationships. Quashing Rome, telling off Pontius Pilate, and beating all opposition was not the priority, it was, and always will be about enhancing and restoring relationships.

So we ask ourselves, In what ways do we put winning and being right ahead of enhancing and preserving relationships? Do we write off people, unfriend them, and put up walls because being right is more important than being in relationship? In what ways is this idolatry?