Silent Saturday...

        Already it is Saturday.  Silent Saturday.  The day after Good Friday. 
        My heart wants to jump ahead to Sunday.  Skip the silence and sadness of this day.  Jump over the gloom and right into the celebration of Easter.  After all, we know the end of the story, so let's dispense with this hard waiting and zip straight into joy, renewal, rebirth. 
        Yet isn't that just like me?  Maybe just like many of us, I'm guessing, to want to bypass the difficult and sorrowful, to gloss over the challenging or confusing and get right to the good stuff?  And resurrection is mighty glorious good stuff--it's the best stuff, the greatest news, the most wondrous life-changing event ever in the history of the universe... 
        But first, we have to wait.  Before the resurrection, there is the horrific, terrible death.  Before the crown, there is the cross.  Before the joy, there is the sorrow.  Before the fulfillment, there is the waiting.  Before the beautiful healing, there is the painful illness or injury.  Before the joy of hope realized, there is the sadness of hope deferred...or even discouragement or despair. 
         And so we wait...on this sad, silent Saturday.  Don't let your heart and mind run ahead.  Rest in this stillness.  Remember the disciples and Jesus' followers on that Silent Saturday as they despaired of all their hopes and dreams.  As they surely questioned how this could possibly have happened.  Why would God allow it?  Maybe they even asked themselves how they could have been so misled; how they could have been so wrong.  Why they had sacrificed so much...for this.  For this--an outcome that was not just the worst possible outcome, but was far beyond the most awful thing they could have ever imagined. 
        Maybe that's where you, or someone you love, are right now.  You--or they-are in the midst of hard, prolonged waiting.  The suffering seems to have no end.  The diagnosis holds no hope.  The future looks bleak.  The present feels empty and hollow.  Perhaps, even the worst possible outcome has occurred.  And you are left waiting...weeping...despairing...doubting.  Much like those disciples on that Silent Saturday. 
        But you are not alone.  God knows. God sees.  And whether you can feel Him or not, He's there, working and moving in the silence, in the stillness. in the suffering, in the sorrow.  Know that the God who threw the stars into the black heavens with a mere word, is with you in your suffering...for He, too, suffered.  He, too, knew what it was to be exhausted, ignored, rejected, betrayed.  He, too, experienced pain, difficulty, frustration, sorrow.   He, too, knew hard waiting. 
        Jesus lay dead and buried on that Silent Saturday.  And He waits with you in yours and holds you close.
        But deep in your heart, even in the silence and sadness, hold tightly to that tiny seed of hope...because I don't care how it looks or feels on Silent Saturday, Sunday is coming.  All the hordes and minions of satan, all of the enemies of Jesus could not hold Him in the grave.   Roll that huge stone into place.  Seal that grave.  Post that fierce Roman guard.  Doesn't matter one iota.  Jesus would easily burst the bonds of death into newness of resurrection life no matter what His puny little enemies tried to do. 
       It may be Silent Saturday...but Sunday's coming.  "When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' 'O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?'  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."  (I Cor.15:54-57) 
         So, yes, let's rest in the silence and sadness today and know that our God is with us in it.  But all the while cling to the joyous hope, the beautiful promise of the resurrection.  Just as it came on the day after Silent Saturday, so it will come one day in our lives as well.  We, too, we be able to proclaim that all our suffering, hurting, and waiting have all been swallowed up in victory.  And that victory will be all the more glorious because of any kind of death--smaller deaths or ultimate death--that we had to endure. 
          Rest in this day, don't rush through the pain...but know, deep in your heart, that Sunday's coming and then it will be time for rejoicing. 
         As has often been said, "God works best in a graveyard."  Oh might we trust Him to work in ours.  Help us, Father.  We believe...but help our unbelief. 
          To God be the glory.