What Holy Week Teaches Us—No Matter What We Believe

Holy Week is sacred.

But not just in a religious sense.

It’s sacred because it tells the truth about life—the kind of truth that transcends doctrine and reaches into the heart of every human experience. Whether you believe Jesus is the Son of God, or you’re just trying to survive this season of your life, Holy Week isn’t reserved for the devout. It’s for the broken. The uncertain. The curious. The tired. The ones still holding on, and the ones who quietly let go a long time ago.

You don’t have to belong to a church to feel the weight of this week.
You don’t have to speak Christian to sit with its message.

Because this week tells the story of a man who chose love over comfort, surrender over control, and presence over performance. And in a world obsessed with power, applause, and curated appearances, that alone should stop us in our tracks.

Holy Thursday: Love That Serves Anyway

Holy Thursday is the night Jesus knelt at the feet of those who would betray, deny, and abandon Him—and washed them clean.

Let that sit with you for a moment.

He knew what they were about to do. And He served them anyway.

He didn’t lecture them. He didn’t shame them. He didn’t call them out on their future failure.

He just knelt.

And that’s what love looks like when it’s not trying to be impressive—it becomes vulnerable. Voluntary. Gritty.

It’s a reminder that true leadership doesn’t come from titles, platforms, or spiritual resumes. It comes from how low we’re willing to go to lift someone else up.

We all have tables.
Places where we’ve been betrayed.
Places where we’ve sat across from people who wounded us.
Places where we’ve wrestled with the ache of showing up for those who may not show up for us.

Holy Thursday asks us: Can we still choose love—even when it's not returned?
Can we still serve—even when we’re afraid?
Can we stay present at the table—even when part of us wants to leave?

Good Friday: The Cost of Love

There’s nothing glamorous about Good Friday.
It is the raw, exposed, unfiltered agony of what happens when love confronts evil, and evil fights back.

Jesus is beaten. Mocked. Stripped. Nailed. Left hanging in humiliation.
And yet, even there—especially there—He does not choose revenge.
He does not call down fire.
He chooses forgiveness.

“Father, forgive them…”

We sanitize the cross so often in our churches, but Good Friday isn’t clean. It’s brutal.
And it speaks to every place in us that has ever felt abandoned, misunderstood, abused, unseen, or dismissed.

Because here’s the truth:
Jesus didn’t just die for our sins. He died in solidarity with our pain.

He died to say:
I see what they did to you.
I know the weight you carry.
I know what it feels like to be betrayed, broken, and left behind.
And I’m not afraid to stand in it with you.

That kind of love costs something.

And maybe Good Friday teaches us that loving well in this world will cost us something too—our pride, our comfort, our right to be right.
But it also births something deeper: a love that can’t be shaken by circumstances or crushed by suffering.

Holy Saturday: When God Is Silent

Holy Saturday doesn’t get much attention. It’s the in-between day. The day after death, before resurrection.
The day the miracle hasn’t come. The prayers haven’t been answered. The world still feels broken.

And yet… this day might be the most honest day of the entire week.

Because so many of us are living in Holy Saturday.

We’re standing in cemeteries of what we hoped for.
We’re looking around at empty spaces where promises once lived.
We’re asking, “Where is God?” and hearing nothing but silence in return.

But silence doesn’t mean absence.
And waiting isn’t wasted.

Holy Saturday teaches us that God often works in the dark, in the depths of the grave, when we least expect it. It reminds us that healing doesn’t always come on our timeline, and resurrection doesn’t always look like what we imagined.

But it also teaches us something else:
We don’t have to skip the silence to get to the miracle.

We don’t have to perform joy while we grieve.
We don’t have to rush into hope just to make others comfortable.
We can sit in the ache and still be held.

Because resurrection isn’t just the end of the story—it’s the promise that even death doesn’t get the last word.

This week is more than history. It’s a mirror. A map. A movement.

It shows us what love really looks like.
It shows us how to walk through heartbreak without losing our humanity.
It shows us that we can serve without being seen, grieve without being forgotten, and wait in the dark without losing our worth.

So no matter where you are—full of faith, full of doubt, or somewhere in between—Holy Week still speaks.
To the wanderer. The skeptic. The questioner. The tired disciple. The angry deconstructer. The exhausted believer.

You don’t have to believe everything to be moved by something.
And maybe that something is this:

There is a God who washes feet.
Who forgives enemies.
Who waits in silence.
Who sees your pain.
And who rises again—not to shame you, but to welcome you home.

So wherever you are in your story—
At the table.
At the cross.
In the grave.

Know this: Resurrection is coming.

Even for you.