Saturday

Right now it's Saturday, at 11:30pm.  Yesterday was Good Friday, and tomorrow is Easter.  And today is just...Saturday.

Good Friday is a relatively well-recognized 'holiday.'  Many people are off work, some people fast, and some go to church.  Good Friday is, without question, one of the most important days in the Christian faith.  It's a time when we focus on the cross that we do not have to bear because Christ already bore it.  It's when we remember that Christ poured his body and blood out on our behalf.  And it's a day that reminds us about God's love for us, a love so strong that he sacrificed his only Son on a cross.  

Tomorrow - Easter - is even more important.  Sure, it's a day for baskets and plastic eggs and lamb and new pastel dresses and gloves and chocolate and Peeps.  Less commercially, it's a day for family and friends and, quite often, church.  But Easter is so much more than that.  If Good Friday is an important day in Christianity, Easter is the important day.  Easter means redemption, salvation, grace and life.  Easter is a day to celebrate that our Redeemer lives, and that, because Christ rose from the grave on the third day, we can live forever with him.

But what about Saturday?  Saturday is not a holiday.  There are no activities or feasts or egg hunts on Saturday.  No gatherings.  No church services.  And rightly so, I suppose...because nothing happened on Saturday.  

Imagine being one of Christ's followers that Saturday.  Imagine giving up everything you have to follow a radical carpenter/teacher, and really believing that he was the One.  The Messiah.  The Savior that you've been waiting for for hundreds of years.

But then he died, a bloody and vicious death, no less.  And all of the sudden, the One that you've been following for three years is buried in a tomb deep in the ground.  He's dead, he's gone, and everything seems over.  Done.  No more.  What you thought was hope is now despair.  What you thought you could trust now seems in question.  Where there was light is now dark.  The voice of God has turned into an impenetrable silence.  

A hopeless, confusing, dark, silent Saturday.

Followed by a hope-filled, brilliantly clear, gloriously light, joyous, victorious Sunday.  

You see, Sunday made Saturday clear.  The despair of Saturday was necessary for the joy of Sunday.  Because for Christ to conquer death he - forgive me for stating the obvious - had to die.

Our lives are full of Saturdays.  Full of times where we don't understand what God is doing.  Full of times when we throw our hands in the air and say, "God, where are you?  What happened?  I thought I could trust you, but you are nowhere to be seen.  I believed who you said you were.  I followed you...and this is what I get?  Silence when I cry out?  Darkness when I'm lost?  Confusion when I'm trying to find my way?  Where are you?"

And sometimes, at least for a while, God doesn't answer.  He stays silent.

But - when God is silent, he is never still.  When we can't see him or hear him or feel him, it never means he isn't right there.  

Because he is.  He is always present during our times of trouble.  He hears our cries.  He sees our pain.  And his silence doesn't mean for one moment that he doesn't care.  In fact, it's quite the opposite.  The pain in our Fridays, the silence in our Saturdays, and the ultimate celebration in our Sundays are all part of God's sovereign plan, and we cannot have one without the others.  

So in your Saturday, rejoice!  

Because tomorrow is Sunday.

"Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

I Cor 4:16-18