I sit here in the wee hours of Easter Saturday morning, awakened from my sleep and unable to return because of the thoughts that dropped into my head at yesterday morning's Good Friday service.
I love the Christmas season, with it's message of peace and love and new hope, but there is something about Easter that as a Christian...it just stirs in me a sense of overwhelming gratitude for the price that was paid for me on that ancient day at Calvary.
As I sat in yesterday's Good Friday service and drank in the worship, the songs telling of a Christ who was crucified at Calvary and rose again on the third day, the thought came to me...we never talk about Saturday! I wonder why that is? Then just as quickly the answer came...Friday we celebrate his crucifixion, Sunday we celebrate his resurrection...but the only thing between Friday and Sunday is the waiting and the mourning, and what celebration is in that??
Living on this side of the Easter story, I believe it is quite easy for us to rush from Friday to Sunday without grasping what those early Christians must have endured in that period of time between Christ's death and resurrection. Imagine what it was like for them knowing that their Lord, their Saviour, the one who had cast out demons, healed their sick, and given them hope... was gone!!
What was left? What did it mean?
Life as they had known it was dead, and they had nothing left to live for anymore. Everything they had ever put their faith in had vanished in the time it had taken Him to speak the words "It is Finished".
I can imagine the celebration that began in the realms of darkness when Christ breathed His final breath. In that moment, the one that held the greatest threat had been conquered, defeated, DEAD! As Phillip Yancey*** puts it, "The snake of Genesis had struck at the heel of God, the dragon of Revelation had devoured the child at last. God's son, sent to earth on a rescue mission, had ended up dangling from a cross like some ragged scarecrow. Oh what a diabolical victory"
But my friends, that is not where the story ended. As Yancey goes on to say "Oh what a short-lived victory. In the most ironic twist of history, what Satan meant for evil, God meant for good. Jesus death on the cross bridged the gap between a perfect God and a fatally flawed humanity."
Have you ever been watching a really good movie - perhaps a suspenseful drama - when someone comes along and tells you what happens at the ending? Somehow it takes away the effect that I'm sure the producers spent millions of dollars trying to have on the watcher! Of course, when the story happens to be our lives, we would love if someone would come along and tell us how it's all going to end. My good friend has said so many times "I wish sometimes that God would just send me an email and let me know how this is all going to play out!"
Can anyone relate?!? I know I can.
I can only imagine that those who loved Jesus and had followed him throughout the life of his ministry would have loved to have known on Friday what would be happening on Sunday. But the truth of the matter was that they did not and Saturday was a very real day for them. They didn't know he was coming back, they didn't know he needed to die in order for them to truly live, they didn't know the divine plan that laid behind the reality they were living out on Saturday.
I guess that's why Saturday doesn't get much attention, I mean why would it really, all it held was "heartache and defeat".
But here is the beauty of Saturday my friends. The greatest act of history was carried out behind the scenes of the doom and darkness that was lived out on Easter Saturday. While the disciples mourned behind locked doors, and the women held each other in tears and desolation, Jesus Christ was working his greatest miracle of all. In death, life had only just begun.
We as humans rarely want to remember the suffering in between Friday and Sunday but Phillip Yancey says "In a real sense, we live out our lives on Saturday, the day with no name".
My life has had a lot of Saturdays. Those periods of time that I look back on with shuddering as I recall the mourning, the darkness, the hopelessness. But thank God as Yancey puts it - Friday was made good because of what happened on Sunday! He says that "the disciples who lived through both days, Friday and Sunday, never doubted God again. They had learned that when God seems most absent he may be closest of all, When God looks most powerless he may be more powerful, when God looks most dead he may be coming back to life".
What day of the week is it for you my friend? If you are living out your Saturday I am here to tell you that "Weeping may last for the night, but JOY comes in the morning!" (Psalm 30:5) and Sunday is on it's way! I know, right now it is hard - and it looks as though there is no hope in sight. But while you are weeping in the darkness, God is working out the details of your situation. And what the enemy has meant for evil in your life, God has meant for good. Sunday is coming, keep holding on to the promises, and as the words of one of my favorite songs says "He'll soon be here, He'll roll back the stone, and He'll call out your name!"
Love this song by Guy Penrod - "Death had lost, and life had won, for Morning had come!"
Praying for strength as you wait for your morning!
Happy Easter!
Tammy JOY
***Phillip Yancey - The Jesus I Never Knew - pgs. 273-275
