Holy Week devotionals 2026

Hello 

It’s Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.

This week, Jesus journeyed through the final days of his earthly ministry. And we’re journeying with him.

There will be crowds and cheers, betrayals and arrests, and before the week is over, the darkest and saddest moment imaginable. But of course, we know that the end isn’t really the end. It’s only the beginning.

We’ll get to that.

For now, the week begins with Jesus riding into town in the strangest of ways. On a donkey! And today we’re going to re-imagine that moment through the eyes of someone unexpected… a pickpocket, somewhere in the crowd.

Read: Matthew 21:1-11

Think

If you were trying to make a statement, you’d arrive in town with noise and a buzz. Think FA cup winning team with open top bus parade. Think limousines. Think war horses with soldiers at your side. But Jesus, his grand entrance is on a wobbly, wonky donkey.

But then again he has a habit of doing things the ‘wrong’ way round.

His kingdom isn’t built the way we expect. It doesn’t roll in with force or flex its muscles to take control of cities and nations. Instead, it comes mending hearts, restoring lives, one person at a time. It’s often less obvious, but always more meaningful. 

So he chooses the donkey. That’s his message. A lived parable. This is what his kingdom looks like, a donkey, not a tank. He’s showing what sort of Kingdom this is.

And maybe that’s the challenge. Because the crowd had their own version. They were ready for revolution, for systems to be overturned, for Rome to be dealt with. “Save us,” they shouted, and they meant, fix our world out there.

But Jesus was fixing our inside world first. This leads to mending the outside world. But it always starts inside. With hearts. It starts with the deeper work of dealing with sin.

That’s not the rescue many were hoping for. And so the same voices that cry “save us” at the start of the week will, by the end, shout “crucify him.” All because he refused to be the kind of king they expected.

Live it

Today’s story reminds us that God doesn’t show up on war horses and tanks. He often shows up in ordinary, everyday things. Do you want to make an impact in your community? Start with the ordinary, everyday things. A listening ear for a mate, a helping hand for a neighbour, tidying some litter away. It might not make a flash grand statement, but it’s the way of Jesus. On a donkey. Bringing change without a fanfare.

Pray

Jesus, we follow your way.
Help us to walk the path of love, peace, and healing.
Keep us from grand gestures that draw attention to ourselves.
Lead us in your way of doing things.
Bless us in the ordinary, everyday work of changing the world.

Amen.

Hello 

It’s Monday, and today we remember the moment Jesus caused absolute carnage in the temple.

Imagine being one of the temple staff, told there’s a disturbance in the marketplace. Only to find gentle Jesus, meek and mild, throwing tables over! Gulp. What’s going on? 

Read Matthew 21: 12-46

Think

What must Jesus have looked like to the people crowded in the temple courts? Kicking over tables and benches. Shouting the odds.  Coins clattering across the stone floor. What a way to behave in God’s house.

Well… exactly.

That seems to be Jesus’s point. He’s prepared to disturb the peace, if keeping quiet means disturbing the heart of God.

The temple was meant to be the place where heaven and earth met. The place where anyone, young or old, rich or poor could come to rest and pray.

But somewhere along the way it had begun to look more like a shopping precinct. Sacrifices to buy, money to exchange, systems to navigate. Layers of religious machinery that made it harder and harder for ordinary people simply to meet with God.

And as always, the people with the least money suffered most.

In the very place they should have felt most welcome, they were made to feel like outsiders, priced out of God’s house. If there’s one thing that seems to get Jesus’s goat up, it’s when the holy elite start deciding who’s in and who’s out. Again and again that’s where his arguments with the religious authorities begin.

So if you’ve ever felt like you don’t quite belong in church, like you don’t know how to behave, or your kids are too noisy, or you don’t know the holy lingo everyone else seems to speak, well… this story should give you hope. Because Jesus isn’t asking you to pretend to be someone else. He just wants you.

He caused a scene in the temple just for you. 

Yes, he was meek and mild. But he was also fierce in his love. Protective of the people others pushed aside. He turned over tables for them. And he’s still doing it today. Flipping benches over, clearing the way, so that nothing stands between you and God.

Live it

Let’s not forget that the house of prayer was meant to be just that – a place for prayer.

When Jesus cleared the temple courts, he reminded people that God’s house wasn’t meant to be full of money and religious performance. It was meant to be a place where people could simply come and pray. Because when prayer moves away from the centre, everything else starts to drift off centre too.

And the same is true for us.

Elsewhere in the Bible we’re described as living temples of God’s presence. We’re made for relationship with God. We’re made to pray. So often we do everything but. We get distracted, or try to work everything out ourselves, and sometimes we lean on the prayers of others at the expense of praying ourselves.

So today, try something simple. Turn off the distractions. Find a quiet place. And just be yourself before God. Don’t worry about getting the words right. 

God simply wants to hear from you. The real you.

Pray

Jesus, create us into places where you live.
Holy temples of your love,
put a song in our mouths.
Let our lives burn steady,
like a candle in a cathedral.
Give us the sense to speak up
when something’s not right,
and the wisdom to hold our tongues
when it’s not our turn.

Amen.

Hello

In today’s video we imagine the widow in the temple, tired and disappointed in what religion has become. But is there still a flicker of hope? Find out…

Read Mark 12:38-44

Think

The widow in the temple catches Jesus’s eye. You can imagine him watching the crowd, people dropping their wads of cash in the collection, making a bit of a show of it. Then there’s this woman with her handful of not-very-much. Just two tiny coins. The last bit she’s got.

Maybe it’s her generosity that stops him. The fact she’s given her last pennies, everything she’s got to live on.

But maybe it’s something else as well. Jesus always seemed to notice the people who were stuck on the bottom rung. The ones everyone else walked past.

Because if we’re honest, something’s not quite right here. In Jesus’s day there was no welfare state. No benefits system. No safety net. If your husband died, you could be in real trouble. Widows were some of the most vulnerable people going.

And God had always been clear about this. His people were meant to look after them. To make sure they were fed. Protected. Not squeezed for their last penny.

You could almost say they were meant to be the Universal Credit where there wasn’t one.

Years later, James, Jesus’s brother,  put it bluntly:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…” (James 1:27).

In other words, you can say all the right things about God. Sing the latest worship song. Quote the Bible front to back. But if your faith never spills out into caring for people who are struggling, people who’ve got less than you, then you’ve missed the point.

Because the God Jesus reveals has always had a soft spot for the ones the world forgets. Jesus knows he is days away from death, and yet here he is still living out his message to the very end: Love God, love people, especially those who have been written off by the world. 

Live it

Maybe there’s two camps reading this today.

Some of you will feel like that widow. Down to your last few pennies, wondering how on earth you’re going to heat the flat or get food on your plate. If that’s you, listen: Jesus sees you. You’re not invisible to him. Have a word with him today. Ask him to show you where a bit of help might come from, who you can reach out to, what door might open. Don’t carry it all on your own.

Then there’s maybe another bunch of you reading this who feel the nudge from James. You know in your gut that faith isn’t just words, it’s got to have sleeves rolled up. If that’s you, ask God to give you eyes for the people around you who are struggling. Then have a think: what can you actually do? Maybe it’s a lift somewhere, a bit of shopping, a listening ear. Get creative with it.

Pray

God, every good thing we’ve got comes from you,
and we’re grateful.

Give us the wisdom to know
what to hold on to
and what to pass on.

We hand over our lives, like the widows copper coins, 
and say make something good of them.

Amen.

Hello

We all make bad calls. Wrong turns. Things we wish we could take back.

But this is the mistake of all mistakes.

Today we try to imagine what might have been going on inside Judas for him to get it this wrong.

Read Mark 14:1-11

Think

What on earth was going on in Judas’s head? How’d he end up losing the plot this badly?

He’d spent three years with Jesus. Walking the roads, hearing him teach, seeing the sort of things he did. You’d think by then he’d have clocked that there was something different about him. Something special. So why chuck it all away now for a wad of cash? Did he reckon God owed him something? Like he’d put the hours in and it was time for a payoff? Maybe. But it might not even have been about the money.

Maybe the story just needed a villain. Some people can only think of themselves. Is Judas just a wrong-un? Or was it was more like this: maybe he grew sick of waiting. Sick of all the talk about God’s kingdom coming and nothing seeming to kick on. Not in the way he wanted. Plenty of people in those days thought God’s Messiah was going to kick off with the Romans.

So maybe Judas thought he’d give things a bit of a push. Force the moment. Put Jesus in a spot where he’d have to act. Where God would finally step in and show his hand. If that’s the case, Judas isn’t just the villain of the story. He’s more like a warning. A warning about what happens when we decide God needs a helping hand. When we get tired of waiting and start trying to run the story ourselves.

God doesn’t need nudging along. Ever. He’s already at work. Often in ways we don’t spot straight away.

Later on, Judas regrets it big time. The money no longer seems worth it. But instead of throwing himself on God’s mercy, he takes matters into his own hands again.

And that’s the real tragedy.

Because with God, there’s always a way back. Always a second chance.

But Judas didn’t wait around long enough to see what God might have done with his story.

So this chapter is never redeemed. He’s forever remembered as the betrayer.

The man who lost the plot.

Live it

Judas looks like he’s committed the one crime you can’t come back from. The unforgivable one. But hadn’t Jesus once said, ‘all sins and every slander uttered can be forgiven.’

All of it.

So it makes you wonder. If Judas had stuck around… if he’d turned back, owned what he’d done, and thrown himself on God’s mercy , would he have been forgiven?

Well, look at Simon Peter. Denied Jesus three times. And yet he was forgiven.

Which makes you think the door wasn’t shut for Judas either. He didn’t stay long enough to find out.

And that raises a question for us.

Have you ever written yourself off? Decided that something you’ve done puts you beyond forgiveness? That God might forgive other people but not you? Or maybe it’s the other way round. Maybe there’s someone in your life who’s done something that, if you’re honest, you find impossible to forgive.

If so, take it to God.

Nobody’s pretending it’s easy. Forgiveness rarely is. And sometimes accepting forgiveness can feel just as hard. But the first step might simply be this: telling God the truth. Admitting the struggle. Take some time to pray honestly through forgiveness. 

Pray

God, we’ve let ourselves down.
We’ve missed the mark,
and we need your forgiveness.

Thank you we don’t have to earn it
or pay it back,
thank you we don’t have to wear ourselves out
beating ourselves up.
It’s a gift
and we take it.

Here’s our latest mistakes,
all of them.
We hand them over
and take your mercy in return.

Amen.

Hello

It’s late. You’re knackered. And the church prayer meeting’s still going on… and on… and on. Ever been there?

If so, you might have a bit of sympathy for how Peter was feeling in today’s reimagining of Gethsemane.

Read Matthew 26:17-56

Think

It’s been a top night. You know them nights where you’ve eaten too much, sung too loud, maybe even danced on tables, and by the end of it all you just want your bed? That’s Peter in Gethsemane.

It’s been a long night as well.  He’s knackered, surely a lad can have one night off from praying?

Except… this isn’t just any night.

Jesus is there in the garden, wrestling it out with his Father. He’s not putting on a brave face, he’s vulnerable. Praying like the world is weighing on his shoulders. Which it is.

And Peter? Peter should be praying too.  Jesus had told him: “Watch and pray so you don’t fall into temptation.” But Peter’s eyes keep dropping shut. He’s just hours away from making one of the biggest mistakes of his life. Pretending he doesn’t know his best mate. Three times then scarpering off. 

You can’t help wondering though… what if Peter had stayed awake in that garden? What if he’d prayed for courage? What if he’d asked God for strength?

Would the night have ended differently for him?

We’ll never know.

Because the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. And Peter nodded off. Not once, not twice, but three times.

While Jesus faced the darkness head on, pouring his fear, his sorrow, out to God. Conquering the battle through prayer. Peter faced it with a hot water bottle and a blanket. Lesson learned. 

Live it

What difference does it really make if we pray? Does it actually change anything? What if I skip church just this once? What if I hit snooze and stay under the duvet a bit longer?

At the time it doesn’t feel like much, just a small choice. Nothing to stress about.

But that’s only because we can’t see the bigger picture.

Prayer isn’t just chucking words up into the sky. It’s where God gets hold of us and starts putting us back together again. 

Same with worship. When we gather with God’s people and sing his praise, even when we’re tired, even when we’d rather be somewhere else, God’s doing something in us. He’s straightening our hearts out a bit. Getting us ready for whatever the day’s going to throw at us.

Those little choices, pray or don’t pray, get yourself to church or stay home, might look tiny at the time, but they can end up shaping the rest of the day… maybe even the rest of your life.

If we really grasped how powerful prayer is, and what worship does in us, maybe we’d be a bit less likely to do a Peter and sleep on the job.

So do yourself a favour today. Make time to pray. Even if you’re tired. Even if there’s something else you’d rather be doing.

Lift your voice. Thank God. Worship him.

You won’t regret it. Not ever.

Pray

Jesus, we’re sorry for the times we’ve dozed off on you,
when life’s made us drowsy
and we’ve drifted away. 

Keep us close.
Wake us up again
to what you’ve done for us.

We’ll stay near,
we’ll remember,
and we’ll serve one another
as our way of saying thanks.

Amen.

Hello

Good Friday is the darkest day in history. On this day, we mocked God, put Him on trial, and then executed Him.

Today’s story is imagined through the eyes of Pilate’s wife.

Read Matthew 27:11-56

Think

What might have been going through Pilate’s wife’s mind?

Perhaps she overheard the private conversation between her husband and Jesus. Perhaps she heard the accusations flying from the religious leaders. Maybe she even heard the crowds outside, their voices rising, baying for blood. Somehow, she knows Jesus is innocent. She senses this is no ordinary trial. And she sends that urgent message to her husband: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man.”

Pilate was known to be ruthless, cynical and self-centred. But if ever there was a time to be something other, this was his chance.  This was an opportunity to do what was right.

But something darker seems to be at work. The crowd is whipped into a fury, the pressure mounts, and Pilate fears a riot.  And so Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is handed over to violence.

He is mocked, beaten, and tortured. 
He is nailed to a cross and left to die.

In a dramatic show, Pilate washes his hands in public, declaring himself innocent. But washing his hands does not remove his guilt. And if we are honest, it does not remove ours either.

It wasn’t just Pilate, or the crowd, or the religious leaders who put Jesus on the cross. It was you. It was me. 

Live it

Good Friday confronts us with the seriousness of sin. Our lies. Our selfishness. Our pride. Our greed . Our violence.  It doesn’t just damage our own lives; it damages others, it makes a mess of God’s good world. So He deals with it by absorbing it. He takes it upon himself at the cross. It costs God His own Son to bring us back to Himself. 

Take a quiet moment now.

Where have you washed your hands of doing the right  thing? Where have you gone along with the crowd? Where have you hurt Jesus, yourself and your neighbour? 

Picture Jesus on the cross. Stay there a while. Tell him what you need to say. His blood saves you. His body heals you. His voice forgives you. 

Now praise Him, because the price you could never pay, He has paid in full.

Pray

Jesus, I’m sorry for the things I’ve thought
and the way I’ve lived,
for not loving myself,
my neighbour,
or the world as I should.

But more than anything,
I’m sorry for the ways I’ve wounded you.

I see you on the cross.
Your blood falls to the earth,
and somehow it makes things clean.
It makes me clean.

Thank you for paying a price
I could never pay.
Thank you for loving me
right to the end.

You are my Saviour.

Amen.

Hello

It’s Easter Saturday. The in-between day. The quiet one.

Today we imagine a contemporary eyewitness account from Joseph of Arimathea.

Read Mark 15:42-47

Think

Joseph of Arimathea is a bit like most of us, if we’re honest.
Caught somewhere between faith and fear.

He believed in Jesus, but quietly. Safely at a distant. John’s Gospel says he followed in secret because he was scared of the religious leaders.
He was also part of the council that condemned Him. We’re told he didn’t agree with the verdict… but we’re not told if he really challenged it. Perhaps he kept his head down when it mattered most. Too frightened to speak up.
Maybe he’d convinced himself that private belief was enough. He’d follow as long a it didn’t cost him.

But then something shifts in him.

Joseph walks straight into Pilate and asks for the body. No more hiding. No more half-measures. In that moment, the secret is out.

He follows Jesus.

And it costs him. Not just his reputation or safety, but his own tomb.

Live it

What about you?

Is it obvious that you follow Jesus? Or have you been keeping it low-key? Do you keep quiet when you know you should speak up?

Take a risk this Easter and tell them about who you follow. Heck, invite them to church tomorrow. There’s still time. Be like Joseph. Play your part in the story.

Pray

Lord, Joseph made room for you,
giving up his own tomb.

We want to make room too.
In our lives and in our words.

Give us courage
where we’ve kept quiet.
Help us speak up
and live it out.

Amen.

Hello

It’s our final day of Holy Week. It’s the end of the big story. Or is it?

Easter Sunday and Mary Magdalene finds out sometimes the ending is really just the beginning.

Read John 20:1-31

Think

Mary Magdalene stands out as a proper friend.

She’s there at the cross when Jesus is having his worst moment. When things turn ugly and everyone scarper, Mary stays put. She’s also the first one at the tomb on Sunday morning. Just because she wants to give her mate a decent send-off.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus had healed her of seven demons. That’s the Bible’s way of saying her life had once been in a terrible mess. When someone pulls you out of a dark hole like that, you don’t forget it. You stick close to them.

And the truth is, Jesus is still pulling people like Mary out of holes today. It might not look like demons, but there are plenty of things that haunt us just the same. Depression, debt, loneliness,  life gone off the rails. Those things can rob us of our peace every bit as much as whatever was tormenting Mary.

That’s what Easter is all about.

Jesus picking people up out of dark holes. The darkest of holes is death. On Good Friday, Jesus disappears down that hole just for us. At first it looks like the darkness has won.

But Easter morning is God’s great turning of the tables. The great reversal. It is the beginning of God putting the world right. Starting with death. The empty tomb isn’t just a happy ending to a sad story. It’s the moment when God begins turning the whole world the right way up again.

Death gets reversed. Debt gets reversed. Loneliness, violence, worthlessness. Bit by bit, it all gets reversed.

And the first person to see it for herself is Mary Magdalene.

Jesus doesn’t hand this world-changing news first to a priest, or a theologian, or someone self-important. He gives it to a woman whose life had once been written off as broken and trouble.

And that’s good news for the rest of us.

We don’t have to be the cleverest or the holiest. We don’t have to have everything sorted. We just have to be our real selves. Turns out that’s enough. Jesus trusts us with his good news not because of anything we’ve done, but simply because he likes us. Because he calls us friends.

And what do mates do? They share each other’s news.

Live it

Every street has one: the gossip. You know the one. News travels through them faster than the internet. Before you’ve even put the kettle on, they already know what’s happened three doors down.

In a funny sort of way, that’s exactly what’s needed here.

Because the first thing Mary Magdalene does when she realises Jesus is alive is run and tell the others. She doesn’t keep it to herself. She passes it on. In other words, she gossips the good news. That’s how the gospel spreads best. Through ordinary people telling other ordinary people: “You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

So be a bit like Mary. Get the message out there.

Tell someone today that there’s hope. Go and gossip the gospel. Go and make disciples of your estate.

Pray

Jesus,
You rose from the dead and gave the good news to Mary,
We pray you’d now help us take the good news to our streets.

You burst out of the grave, now help us to burst into life
Excited that forgiveness is here and all things are possible.

Breathe life over our estates.

Amen.