Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday
What happened on Saturday of that first Holy Week? After the numbing, tragic events of Friday, nothing seemed to go on at all. Perhaps it's a bit like the day after the funeral for the one you loved, and the mourners and family have drifted away, and you find yourself alone. Jesus' friends and followers certainly hung their heads, feeling acute grief, trying to stave off dark disillusionment. After all, for Jews, like Jesus, his mother, and the disciples, Saturday was the Sabbath, and they did what God's people do, even when they have lost everything: they worshipped, they prayed, mourned the human condition, rested and waited.
Alan Lewis called the day "a significant zero, a pregnant emptiness, a silent nothing which says everything." We live our lives - don't we? - in-between, like Holy Saturday. Talk to the widow whose husband died of cancer last year. She has seen Good Friday. She may believe the Easter Resurrection is coming - but for now she is in between. Talk to the husband reeling from his wife's exiting their marriage. We live in-between.
God could have raised Jesus immediately, or levitated him directly from the cross into heaven. Why wasn't God more urgent? God waited. God did nothing for a time. Perhaps God knew we would experience life, and loss, and love in just this way. We have hope - but the waiting can be a silent nothing. And we have to wait. We live in between.
For now, Saturday is a day to wait, to be still, to hope against hope...
( this is an excerpt from James Howell's blog.He is pastor of Myers Park Methodist in Charlotte,NC)