So, What About Saturday?

This past Saturday was the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. There’s a lot of focus put on the day that Christ died on the cross and the day that he rose from the dead (and rightfully so!), but I began to wonder what his family, friends and followers were feeling as they waited in the midst of their pain and expectation. On Friday, they knew their Lord was no longer alive. On Sunday, Jesus made his resurrected presence known.

But what about Saturday? What was that day like for the ones who loved him most? Did they worry about what Sunday would bring? Did they fear the worst and begin to question the validity of Christ’s claims? Did they cling to the truth of Jesus’ words and linger in this agonizing anticipation? Did they cry those ugly, uncontrollable tears of grief because they missed him deep down in the very pits of their souls?

As I thought through what that particular Saturday must have been like, it sounded a whole lot like our present-day experiences on this earth. We know and believe what Jesus said and did, we have his promises to hold on to, we have the hope of Heaven to look forward to when we exhale our final breath. But this life represents the time in between. Even though we cling to the truth of Jesus’ words,
sometimes we still tend to worry about what the future may or may not bring. Sometimes we fear the worst. We have moments of pain and sorrow that bring us to our knees as we endured unfulfilled longings, black holes in our hearts labeled with loved ones who have passed on, circumstances that leave ugly scars. We go through this ebb and flow of emotions. We know how the story ends but we’re living out our days waiting to witness eternity with our own eyes.

Our ‘Saturdays’ can feel fragile, they can seem uncertain. Walled in by our own human limitations, we begin to question what we cannot control and stress over what we cannot see. But Jesus held his Saturday in the palm of his hand all along, and we can trust that he holds our ‘Saturdays’ too. We are not living in a world defined by some purposeless state of happenstance. QUITE THE OPPOSITE! Every moment of our time here on this earth has meaning. We are called to follow our Savior, to lay down our lives at the foot of his cross and to walk in a way that magnifies his amazing love. So take a deep breath instead of holding it, and rest in the total confidence we are afforded by the Savior of this world. Friends, when it comes to our ‘Saturdays’, we don’t have to know the details around the where, what or why. We just have to know the Who. He is with us always.

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

-Galatians 2:20-