This is something I posted to my personal Facebook page last year, and it resonated with a lot of people. I’m re-posting it here; I pray it blesses your Easter Saturday.
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For me, something that has always been lost in the shuffle of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday is this day.
Saturday.
The day after Jesus died. The day before He rose. The one full day His body lay in that rock-hewn tomb.
The hours between sundown on Friday and sunup on Sunday must have seemed bleak and endless for those who loved Jesus. It was a Sabbath, that Saturday, so there was no work to distract them, not that they would’ve been able to concentrate on it if there had been. They must have still been in shock. Stunned by the tragic turn of events. Fearful the Jewish leaders would come for them next. Abandoned. Betrayed. Disillusioned. Perhaps even angry at Jesus for filling their heads with dreams. Sure, He had predicted His death, and He also said He would rise again, but did any of them, in their finite humanness, actually think that would happen? They had seen Him demonstrate His power over death with Lazarus, yes…but I don’t think anyone who saw Jesus laid in that tomb ever expected that He really would come out of it.
Jesus, their Messiah, their Rabbi, their Friend, had just been murdered on a Roman cross, and their world no longer made sense.
I can sometimes identify with those Saturday disciples. As the world we inhabit becomes more and more broken, as cruel dictators deploy chemical weapons and divisions in our own country deepen, as natural disasters crush and cripple thousands, as loved ones die and disease is rampant and we all muddle through the unimaginably hard things this fallen world throws at us, it is easy to doubt. To wonder if all those crazy promises God made to us are really true. To wonder if maybe I’ve just believed in a story that’s got a nice ending, but is, ultimately, a work of fiction.
But it is true. It is. All of it.
Because that tomb was empty on Sunday morning. Because those disciples saw Jesus in His resurrected glory. They saw His smile and touched His wounds and received His spirit. They went on to face martyrdom without fear, because they were fully convinced that Jesus was exactly who He said He was. Everything He had said to them, all the promises He had made, all of it was true. Their faith was not in vain.
And because that tomb was empty, because Jesus is risen just as He said, we can be confident that all His promises to us are true as well. That He will never leave us or forsake us. That He makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him. That whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. That someday we will be with Him forever, in a world with no more sadness, no more fear, no more pain, no more struggle. Where God makes everything right again and all is as it always should have been.
It’s Saturday, friends. It’s Saturday.
But Sunday is coming.