By Abe Villarreal
Last week at the migrant center, a kid about nine years old wanted to help me hand out cake for one of the birthdays we were celebrating. We celebrate many birthdays at the center for young and old. This kid has been there with his seven brothers and sisters, and mom, for about three weeks.
He has some kind of leg, hand, and arm disability. His mom helps him walk. His brother helps him in the restroom. His hands are stiff and held out in an immobile position. He can hold things just differently from the rest of us. He did help me with the cake distribution. All kids want to help in some way.
It's Holy Week, and the lessons of kindness and forgiveness are reminders of the world we live in, in 2024. A world where kindness and forgiveness need to be reminded of as much as possible. Those reminders come in all shapes and sizes – religious figures, family members, and the disabled kid at the migrant center.
The kid was all smiles, just like any other kid would be with a big slice of confetti cake in front of him. When you're a kid in a migrant center, you rely on the generosity of others. The volunteers, your family, and a large circle of folks protecting you from a complicated world.
That's what our world has been, not just recently, but for a long time. Very complicated. We know it, but so do kids. A kid would tell you that there are bad people out there and that they do bad things. We need prayer for ourselves, for our kids, for people we don't know.
During Holy Week, the greatest story ever told, is retold. It's a tough one because of its details. Betrayal, family, pain, trials, friendship, death. The values and the complexities we still struggle with today. The challenges that our kids will struggle with tomorrow. The good news is that we have answers. That we were given an answer, during that holy week so long ago.
Holy Week is about giving up something, about surrendering. Something we don't like to do. We want to hang on to everything we see around us. What we've collected, what we think is important. The things that don't last forever. Shiny things and broken things, but not everlasting things.
We miss the forest for the trees because we don't focus on what's bigger than us, not what is in front of us, but what is above us. Holy Week is about looking above and focusing on the eternal. Remembering that love and sacrifice were given to us, so that we can give it to others.
I don't know where that migrant kid with the disabled hands will end up or how he will end up, but he is happy at the moment because someone is watching over him. Someone is watching over us, too. He's been watching us since the beginning. We just have to look back up and acknowledge he's there.
"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends," John 15:13.
Abe Villarreal writes about the traditions, people, and culture of America. He can be reached at
