Good Saturday

The other night when I was reading poetry I came across a gem. One that I've been pondering over for the past few days...
I've been thinking about what comes after Good Friday. The horror of that day is true and real and I shudder when I think about my Christ upon that hill...dying for me. But I kind of brushed over the whole "three days" aspect. Brushed over Saturday...and right on into Easter, right up to that empty tomb. But today I'm stuck on Saturday.
 24 hours of Nothing.
24 hours of Sabbath. And for the disciples, for those followers of Jesus who loved Him and Hoped in Him, Sabbath would have meant a day of "rest" a day to "reflect". So there they were, their Hope has just died and now they are forced to sit and do nothing.
The worst kind of awfulness in my opinion.

I've always liked that it was the women who went to Jesus's tomb on Sunday morning, as the sun rose and the sabbath was over...but now I'm looking at it differently. I'm thinking of them on Saturday and how they must have sat together searching in their minds for the meaning of this awful act, talking together about what to do next, how to move on...wanting something to do. 


But I think it was no accident that our Lord died on a Friday, that those that He Loved would have to wait a day, sit and wait. Nothing for them to do.

When things do not go my way I often expect that tomorrow will bring the answer, that tomorrow things will be set aright. But what if its not? What if tomorrow things are NOT aright? What if we are asked to, instead, sit still.....
I suppose its there that I have an advantage to those first Followers of Jesus. I know what happens on Sunday. I know how the first of the week begins.
And so I hope that when I am asked to sit quietly on my "day in between" I will do so with a little more faith that Easter will come. That salvation will arise. That Light will triumph over darkness...and that sometimes I must be still and quiet and be faithful in my waiting.
And so Happy Good Saturday, my friends...as we sit and wait for Sunday, may we remember that in all our darknesses there is an Easter coming.



That was the Day Between 
the Night Before-
The blood
still wet upon the hill;
His body
wrapped.
entombed,
and still;
the great stone sealed
with Roman seal
and guarded well.


Many a Judean home
had now become 
a lesser tomb
within whose walls
men lay,
whose Life had died
That Day.


Looking back
we cannot share
their black
despair.
For us
He is the Risen Christ,
as He had said:
for them, that Shabbat,
all life died-
for He was dead.


That was the Day Between
the Night Before.


This is my Day Between,
my Night Before...
Suspended 
in this interim
let me be still,
let me adore,
let me remember
Him.