Stuck in Saturday

Stuck in Saturday

Many times during the Easter season, we focus heavily on two of the three days that surround the events of Jesus’s final moments on earth. We have services and acknowledge Good Friday as the day on which Jesus paid the ultimate price for our sins. It’s the day when he was betrayed, beaten, and hung on a cross to die, seemingly falling into the enemy's plans and accepting defeat. We have services, celebrate, and acknowledge Easter Sunday as the day when God, through Jesus, rose from the dead in victory, having ransomed His children for generations from eternal fire. Two very worthy days to celebrate and honor our King Jesus and the victory He won on Calvary, but what about Saturday?

I can’t help but think about the agony of being stuck in Saturday for a follower of Christ at that time. The anguish they must have felt having watched or heard of their Rabbi falling to one of the most gruesome and violent forms of death known to them at that time. The questions they must have wrestled with as the doubts creeped in of wondering if it was all real. The mix of grief for their Master and grief for the betrayal of one of their own. The time between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday is not something we talk about often, but it is often a day many of us find ourselves stuck in.

I find it difficult to fully explain what being “stuck in Saturday” really feels like. It’s all the bad feelings you’ve experienced, all in one, but multiply it by ten or maybe even more. Of course, everyone’s experience is different, and the complexity of losing my sister and dad so close to together only compounds my grief exponentially, but I imagine that my experience was amplified even more so for the disciples, who witnessed the one true King hang on a cross and die. I love my sister, and I love my dad, but even their loss combined cannot compare to the loss of a friend in Jesus Christ. The emptiness and darkness they must have felt, not to mention the fear that most likely overtook them, would have been overwhelming, to say the least.

All our Saturday seasons are different from others, and each person will have many Saturdays spread throughout their life to be stuck in. Some Saturday’s you seem to breeze through a lot easier than others, but the underlying feeling is the same: loss. You’re grieving the death of something important to you: a person, a relationship, a job, a potential, and the loss can completely overtake you.

The good news is that we know Saturday does eventually end. The sun will set and rise again, and we can begin our very own Resurrection Sunday, and while that little bit of hope may not feel spectacular when you are in the thickest part of your grief, it's the light at the end of the tunnel that can help you make it through.