Saturday
The day after the hope of the world died and the hearts of the world broke and the Father cried
And the disciples saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing… yet remembered everything
Do you remember what he said? What he promised? What he did? Who he was?
Do you remember what our lives were like before we met this man who spoke words of hope, who taught us to believe in miracles, and to believe that God sees us and hears us and, dare we believe, even loves us?
But that was yesterday.
Today he is gone along with all our hope.
And we… we write our sermons and practice our songs, preparing for the celebration we know is coming tomorrow and forget to stop and remember the saturday people…
Those who have lost who are hurting who are broken who don’t believe in anything beyond this unrelenting, unending Saturday
We pretend that we are not also saturday people who lose who feel pain who break who hold desperately to belief, despite what our eyes can see
…and wonder why God waited.
Why did God wait to bring his people out of exile? from suffering in Egypt and wandering in Sinai and exile in Assyria and Babylon and Persia and bondage under Rome and…from Saturday
Maybe this is because we all spend much of our lives in Saturday in between loss and hope in between death and life in between exile and belonging in between Friday and Sunday
It is in the midst of the pain of Saturday that we are asked to trust that God is still good that God is still there that God knows when Sunday is coming
because even on the darkest Saturday in human existence Sunday came!