Saturday: God With Us In The Grave

Holy Saturday = Silence. The pain of loss is acute. We know this feel well - as silence can describe the place in which many of us live. We are waiting for God to say something or do something or make sense of the things we are experiencing. We know that Jesus died for us yesterday. We trust that there may be miracles tomorrow. But what of today – this eternal Sabbath when heaven is silent? 

What to do? Through tears and despite fear, we throw our arms around the faith that Jesus taught us. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning… therefore I will hope in him.” Lamentations counsels further,  

Lam 3:1-9, 19-24

I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness,
the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed.
I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember,
and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:

God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over)
He’s all I’ve got left.

We are afraid to simply wait with the mess of problems unresolved until God Himself unmistakably intervenes, as He did on Easter Sunday. We are unwilling to admit, “I don’t have a clue what God is doing or why this is happening.” We may even suspect that it would be un-Christlike to cry out publicly, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” Why can’t we wait in the mess and pain of Holy Saturday?

What happened today on earth?
There is a great silence.
A great silence, and stillness,
A great silence because the King sleeps.

The scholar Alan E. Lewis was one of the few people to have written and thought seriously about Holy Saturday. While writing his devotional he found out - half way through the project - that he was dying of incurable cancer. Suddenly the theme had become deeply personal. Here is one of his prayers from that book:

Hear our prayer for a world still living an Easter Saturday existence, oppressed and lonely, guilty of godlessness and convinced of godforsakeness. Be still tomorrow the God you are today, and yesterday already were: God with us in the grave but pulling thus the sting of death and promising in your final kingdom and even greater victory of abundant grace and life over the magnitude of sin and death. And for your blessed burial, into which we were baptized, may you be glorified for evermore. 

Amen. Alan E Lewis (1944 – 1994)

Take heart – God’s silence doesn’t mean he has forsaken us. God is doinga great thing!