It’s hard today to pretend like tomorrow isn’t Easter. How many people have I seen post on Facebook or say in conversation ‘But Sunday’s coming!’ And it is.
But we do well to put ourselves back into that first Saturday before Easter. A Sabbath day for Jesus’ disciples. A day of rest and worship. For them, it was a day to recover from the shock of what had just transpired. A day that should have been filled with warm memories of a special Passover was instead a post-traumatic nightmare of regret, guilt, and fear.
I don’t know about any of my readers… but I have certainly found myself there. Full of hopes that were crushed. Faith tested, torn, even overturned.Thinking back over a friendship that was destroyed and knowing how it happened. And knowing it cannot be repaired. Seeing my own sins that I would give anything to undo. But can’t.
Today is a tiny Lent. A day to wait. To wrestle with what is and attempt to cope with it To know, really, how faithlessness and loss of faith feel.
There can be no Sunday without Saturday and Friday. No resurrection without both the cross and the day that follows.
Today give to God those things that we can so easily understand from the disciples’ experience on that Saturday. We cannot avoid them or evade them. We can when Sunday comes live with them.