What must the disciples and tiny band of believers have been thinking and feeling? The chief priests and Pharisees remembered Jesus' words that He would rise in three days, and so they go to Pilate, demanding: "Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples go and steal Him away and tell the people, 'He has risen from the dead,' and the last fraud will be worse than the first.'" Pilate agrees and tells them "'Go make it as secure as you can.' So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard." (Mt.27:62-66)
The enemies of Christ remembered, but His own did not. While those hostile to Jesus did all humanly possible to keep Him in that tomb, His disciples had fled, huddling and hiding, fearful and forgetful of all Jesus had taught and shown them. In the moment of crisis, all was forgotten. Isn't that so like me? I read it, speak it, teach it, but sometimes, in the heat of trials or temptations, I can so quickly forget the Truth that saves and sustains me. Forgive me Lord.
The disciples forgot and thus their faith faltered. All seemed lost--all hope, all dreams, all future, all joy--as lost and gone forever as their dead Messiah. This was the end of the road.
Or was it? As we sit today on this silent, sorrowful saturday, might we remember that those places where our road seems to be ending, may only just be the cusp of a glorious beginning. We wait in the dark, outside the tomb of our hopes and dreams, but trust that God may just be doing something we cannot begin to imagine. That He is working in the darkness, in the tombs of disappointed expectations or crushed dreams, and preparing for new resurrected life.
Ann Voskamp writes: "Today, wait. Sit at the tomb and wait on the Lord. Trust when all is dark. Believe when the stone is rolled in and sealed. Carry a stone in your pocket and remember: there is hope. Wait and have faith in the coming Resurrection, glorious light erupting on black horizon."
And so we wait, stones in pockets and purses, and trust in Him even when we cannot see Him or feel Him. In all the tombs of our lives--tombs of disease or death or despair or disruption--we grip our stones, and we wait and trust. We trust even when our Savior lies cold and buried in a borrowed tomb. We trust His Word even when we cannot glimpse His person or sense His presence. But we know: while it's a silent, sorrowful saturday... Sunday is coming.
To the Savior who will be resurrected, be all the glory forever and ever.
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