Saturday, March 30, 2013

Holy Saturday


Holy Saturday is the day impacts me the most during holy week.

Holy Saturday breaks my heart.

To even the most ardent, the most believing followers, Saturday had to look like the end of their world.  The man, the God-man they had listened to, abandoned all to take up their collective crosses and follow, was gone.  The stone stood firmly in place.  No sounds came from within the tomb.  Jesus was dead.

The disciples had anticipated Jesus would be an "earthly" king.  That he would vanquish the ruling Romans and lead the Jewish people in a long-awaited victory over their enemies.  Earthly kings aren't supposed to die.  They certainly aren't supposed to go without putting up an epic fight and killing thousands of shoulders with the power contained merely in his finger.  The meek, suffering Son of God they watched hang from the cross now truly seemed gone...without any intent to return.

Holy Saturday, to me at least, represents the darkest days in life.  Everything we've put our hope in has been ripped out from under us.  People we believed in have disappointed us.  Often it seems that God has broken his promise to give us life and give it to us abundantly.  The depressive pall that hangs over the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday permeates to this day.  We wander through life, feeling betrayed and leaderless.  What we believed in is gone.

We go to bed...expecting another day of grief ahead...

Fortunately, God wasn't/and still isn't through writing this story...

So, today, I'm going to use Holy Saturday as a day to come before God and be honest in my emotions, in my sorrows.  He knows them anyway, so hiding them from Him is pointless.  I'll lay my concerns at the foot of an empty cross, pouring out my heart and grief for the sins I've committed that made Calgary necessary in the first place.

But luckily, I've read the next page.  I know it doesn't end here.

And, tomorrow morning, my sorrows and sins will be cleansed by the blood of the cross.  And I'll celebrate a savior who loved me enough to endure a hell he, in his perfection, never deserved--but one he took in my place.


No comments: