There’s a lot packed into that title, and it starts with a confession. I almost missed Palm Sunday — which is a little embarrassing for a pastor to admit.
Life has been moving fast lately. I’m in a leadership group with other community leaders, and I had been in a conversation with one of the other pastors about Easter plans. I was asking him what their church was doing, listening to his ideas, thinking it was still a couple of weeks out. Then Friday afternoon came. Belinda and I were talking, and I mentioned something about Good Friday — assuming it was two weeks away, because that’s when our school district gets the day off. She pulled up the calendar and said, “No, it’s next Friday.”
I stopped cold. If Good Friday is next Friday, that means next Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. Which means this Sunday is Palm Sunday. I went back and checked my calendar — I hadn’t turned on the holiday display — and sure enough, there it was. I had almost missed it entirely.
It’s easy to do that. Life crowds in, attention gets pulled in a dozen directions, and before you know it you’ve lost track of what’s actually happening around you. But when it comes to missing important days on the calendar, that’s a minor problem. The real concern is when we start missing God.
The more we miss God, the further we drift from his presence. The more we miss God, the easier it becomes to ignore conviction. The more we miss God, the more we miss the blessings he has prepared for us. That pattern — and what breaks it — is what this post is about.
What Jeremiah Saw
Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet, and once you spend time in his writing, you understand why. He received some of the most sobering words in all of Scripture, words he was called to deliver to people who largely refused to hear them. Jeremiah chapter 6 is a case in point.
The passage opens with urgent warnings of coming military destruction. God’s word through Jeremiah is direct and unsettling: “Be warned, O Jerusalem, or I shall be alienated from you and make you a desolation, a land not inhabited.” Then the diagnosis of why judgment is coming gets even sharper:
“For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for gain. And from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely. They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace. Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all. They did not even know how to blush.”
The indictment is comprehensive. Top to bottom — from the common person to the religious leaders — the same problem: greed, dishonesty, surface-level devotion and faith with no real substance underneath. And when God offered a way back, the response was refusal:
“Thus says the Lord, stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ And I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet.’ But they said, ‘We will not listen.'”
God wasn’t distant. He was sending prophets, raising up watchmen, delivering clear warnings. The problem wasn’t that God was silent. The problem was that his people had stopped listening. And so the word went out to the nations:
“Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth, behold, I am bringing disaster on this people, the fruit of their plans, because they have not listened to my words. And as for my law, they have rejected it also.”
The end of Jeremiah’s story is one of the most heartbreaking in the Old Testament. Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. The temple — the dwelling place of God’s presence — was destroyed. The people were taken into exile. Looking back from Babylon, it was impossible not to wonder: what if they had listened? What if they had returned when God called them back? They had their day of visitation, and they missed it.
Jesus Weeps Over Jerusalem
Fast forward several centuries to Palm Sunday, and the same tragic pattern reasserts itself — this time with the Son of God riding into the city on a colt.
The scene in Luke 19 is well-known. Jesus sends two disciples ahead to retrieve a colt that no one had yet ridden. They bring it back, lay their garments over it, and Jesus rides toward Jerusalem while the crowd erupts in praise:
“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
The timing and context matter. Lazarus had recently been raised from the dead, and word had traveled. Jerusalem was already swelling with Passover pilgrims — more people in the city than usual, many of them catching wind of what was happening as Jesus made his way in. The Pharisees, alarmed at the messianic language filling the streets, demanded that Jesus silence his followers. His answer is striking: “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out.” What was happening was too significant to be suppressed.
But then the text takes a turn that stops everything.
“When he approached Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, ‘If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace, but now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another because — you did not recognize the time of your visitation.'”
There it is. The crowd is shouting, people are laying coats in the road, it is the greatest entrance the city had ever seen — and Jesus is weeping. He sees what they cannot see: the gap between what is being celebrated and what is actually being understood. The Messiah they had prayed for, longed for, and waited generations to receive was right there in front of them. They could touch him, hear him, be healed by him. And they were going to miss it.
Less than forty years later, in 70 AD, Rome did exactly what Jesus described. The city was leveled. The temple was destroyed. Not one stone was left on another. The pattern that played out in Jeremiah’s day replayed itself in a single generation — because they did not recognize the time of their visitation.
The Difference Maker
Here is where the story shifts for those of us on this side of the resurrection.
It’s tempting to look back at the people of Jeremiah’s time or the crowds on Palm Sunday and wonder how they could have missed it. If Jesus were riding through our city today, we’d recognize him. We’d ask every question, follow his every word, never let the moment pass. But there’s something we have that they didn’t — and it changes everything.
The night before his crucifixion, Jesus prepared his disciples for what was coming. In John 14, he told them something that must have been difficult to hear: he was leaving. But in the same breath, he made a promise:
“I will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper, that he may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see him or know him. But you know him because he abides with you and will be in you.”
Notice the weight of that last phrase: with you and in you. When Jesus was physically present, he could only be in one place at a time. If he stepped away to pray, he wasn’t with the disciples. If he went to speak privately with someone, those waiting behind didn’t have him. But the Holy Spirit operates on entirely different terms — present with every believer, in every place, at every moment.
A few chapters later in John 16, Jesus pressed this point even further:
“It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”
That’s a remarkable statement. Jesus — the one who healed the sick, raised the dead, walked on water — is saying it is better for his followers that he leave. Not because his physical presence wasn’t valuable, but because the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence would be unlimited in a way his earthly ministry could never be.
And what does the Spirit do? Jesus explains: “He will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak. And he will disclose to you what is to come.” The Spirit convicts of sin, points to righteousness, and guides believers into truth. He takes what belongs to Jesus and discloses it to those who belong to him.
David understood this. Even in his worst moments — and his failures were significant — he knew what was at stake when the Spirit’s presence was at risk. Psalm 51 records his desperate cry after his great moral failure:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.”
David had tasted what it was like to walk closely with God, and he had also experienced the cost of drifting away. His prayer reflects both. He didn’t ask for renewed success or restored reputation. He asked for the Holy Spirit. That’s what he knew mattered most.
The contrast between the disciples before and after Pentecost tells the same story. Before the Spirit came, they were regularly confused, afraid, and fumbling. After Pentecost, they turned the world upside down. The same people — dramatically different capacity. The difference wasn’t education, strategy, or personality. It was the Holy Spirit.
Don’t Miss the Middle
There’s one more thing worth saying about Palm Sunday specifically, and it’s this: in much of Western Christianity, we move from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday in a single week — and in doing so, we often skip over what happened in between.
Some traditions do mark Maundy Thursday, drawing from the Latin word Mandai, meaning “commandment.” The focus is on the moment when Jesus, in the upper room the night before his death, gave his disciples a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. Some churches also hold Good Friday services. But even when those gatherings happen, it’s easy for the full weight of the crucifixion to pass without being absorbed.
We go from the triumphal entry to the empty tomb. Victory to victory. And we miss what Jesus actually endured in those hours between.
The cat of nine tails used in his flogging did not leave surface wounds. His back was torn open, flesh exposed. The crown of thorns was not decorative — it was driven into his skull. He was humiliated, made to carry the instrument of his own death until he physically could no longer do it and someone else was forced to carry it. At Golgotha, spikes were driven through his wrists and feet. Crucifixion killed by suffocation; the condemned had to push themselves up to draw a breath, then fall back down, over and over. Because his feet were nailed, Jesus couldn’t sustain that effort indefinitely. The Romans broke the legs of those crucified alongside him to hasten their deaths. By the time they reached Jesus, he was already gone.
From the cross, Jesus cried out the opening words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In that moment, he bore the full weight of human sin — something Hebrews tells us he was able to endure because he fixed his gaze on what lay on the other side. He saw the resurrection. He saw the countless lives that would be reconciled to God. He saw the Holy Spirit poured out on all who believe. And he went through it anyway.
All of that — every moment of it — is the cost of walking in the Holy Spirit. It is the price of what we have been given.
This week, as Resurrection Sunday approaches, don’t skip straight to the celebration without pausing at the cross. The victory is real and worth celebrating with everything we have. But the victory cost something. Someone paid it. And the gift that came out of it — the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, available to every believer who is paying attention — is the very thing that keeps us from missing our day of visitation.
Don’t miss what God is doing around you and in you. Stay close. Stay attentive. Walk in the Holy Spirit.
Peace,
Todd