The weeks of Lent have a way of slipping by, and before we know it, we find ourselves here in the middle of Holy Week, retracing the final steps of Jesus’ journey to the cross. What began on Ash Wednesday as a quiet reminder of our humanity now unfolds into something far more tangible.
Because this is the week where the story slows down and stretches out in front of us. We began the week with Palm Sunday where Jesus enters Jerusalem to cheering crowds waving palm branches and singing praises. And then we see him enter the temple, overturning tables, and calling out what has been stolen and misused. Along the way, there are moments that feel small but pointed, like a fig tree that should have borne fruit and didn’t. It’s a week full of movement and tension, where everything is building, and nothing is quite as simple as it seems.
Tomorrow on Maundy Thursday, we will sit at the table like the disciples did, in moments that feel both ordinary and sacred. Sharing a meal, passing bread, pouring wine – all daily events. And yet, underneath it, there is a weight to what Jesus said and did. He knew what was coming, and yet He spoke of love, of serving one another, and of a new covenant beginning. It is intimate and tender, but undoubtedly moving toward something costly.
And then comes Good Friday.
It is difficult to rush past the somberness of Good Friday. The cross confronts us with the reality of sin in a way that is not abstract or distant. It’s personal, its heavy, and it reminds you and me that Jesus did not come to offer vague inspiration or general encouragement, He came to take on the full weight of our broken world and carry it Himself. And oh, the weight of our broken world! There is a quote from a favorite book* of mine that eloquently states this fact… “the charges, all of them, laid against every soul who ever lived … records of all acts of unrighteousness and all sins ever committed in all the ranks of mankind had been commuted. Disappeared… All of them changed! Nay, vanished. All charges are now laid to one man only: Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.”
And for three days, it feels like that might be the end of the story.
But the story doesn’t end there…because Easter morning doesn’t arrive as a detached celebration. It comes as a response to everything that came before it. The empty tomb is only as powerful as the cross was real, and the resurrection matters because death actually happened. This is what makes Easter more than just a joyful day on the calendar. It is the turning point of everything: the burdensome weight of sin has been lifted, the shadow of death broken, and the love we glimpsed poured out on the cross revealed as not just sacrificial but victorious.
Most importantly, this story we’ve been walking through is not just something we skim over, it is something we are invited into. The same God who walked with His disciples through all their confusion, fear, and grief meets us in those same places now. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is still at work, bringing life to the things that feel empty, restoring what is broken, and calling us into something new.
So as we move through these final days of Holy Week, the invitation isn’t to rush ahead to Easter morning. It’s to stay with the story each day: to sit at the table, to stand at the foot of the cross, and then, when the time comes, to step into the light of the resurrection with a better understanding of what it cost… and why that matters.
Because Easter didn’t just happen. It changed everything.
*The Triumph by Gene Edwards
*- The Triumph by Gene Edwards