Have you ever experienced a time in your life when the worst has happened? Maybe you lost your job or got a divorce, or a loved one passed away. As I sit here reflecting on this Holy Saturday I think that’s how the disciples must have felt all those thousands of years ago. Their Savior and friend was gone and they were lost and confused. They were grieving and in pain. Everything they had hoped for was gone and unlike us, they didn’t know Easter Sunday was coming.
As many of you know I recently experienced a very painful time in my life. Losing our twins was certainly the most painful thing I have ever experienced. All the hopes and dreams we had for them were gone in an instant and like the disciples, we were left lost and confused. So what do we do when our lives feel like they are stuck in the day in between? When the worst has happened and we don’t know what do to next. When we are confused and lost and overwhelmed by grief and pain.
When I visited Minnesota recently I landed in Minneapolis and as we flew in I was amazed by how white everything was. The whole city was covered in snow. The trees, the houses, the roads. And although it was breathtakingly beautiful there was something very somber about seeing all that snow. In the winter you can’t see the green grass or the leaves on the trees. The animals are all hibernating and there really isn’t much evidence of life at all. I think that’s how it must have felt on that first Holy Saturday. As the disciples considered all that had just happened and that their Savior and friend now lay dead in a tomb there would have been no signs to tell them what was really going on, under the surface, beyond where they could see.
The amazing thing about the winter though is that even as the snow lays on the ground and there are no visible signs of life, just under the surface beyond where the eye can see things are beginning to happen.
I think when we consider Easter it is easy to skip over the importance of this Saturday. It’s easy to focus on Good Friday and the fact that Jesus died for our sins and then to focus on the joy of Easter Sunday and the fact that he has risen again. But the day in between was just as important. God was working even though we couldn’t see it. Jesus was completing the work he started on the cross the day before.
The last few months have felt like a cold and dark winter for me, at times I felt like there was no hope. But what I have discovered is that even in my darkest hour when all was lost He was still working and I’m beginning to see the signs of Spring. As He begins to show what me He is doing and how He is carving out a new life for us in a new place, hope is beginning to rise. He’s reminding me that He sees it all. He sees my pain and my grief and all my hopes and dreams and He has not forgotten. He has held me in my darkest days when I was lost & confused and has already begun to redeem and restore all that I have lost. As we live in the day in between and as we wait, we remember the promise of the resurrection that Jesus lives and that even when all seemed lost God was already working His redemptive plan. A plan to save the world and restore His children and their relationship with Him.
Its like when you see the first buds of spring break through the snow. Its still cold, the snow is still on the ground but its beginning to melt and the promise of Spring is just around the corner. And as the disciples discovered just one day later, God always redeems, always restores and always has the victory! Christ is risen! And I will hold on to that promise and that hope till the Spring comes.