Spirituality

In between the now and the not yet – Saturday

I hear this over and over, “… Sunday’s coming!” 

Sunday’s coming

It‘s a lovely sentiment and, it is true. 

But I fear it is a shortcut. We rush headlong into Sunday. What would we find if we paid attention to Saturday?

The day between the death of Jesus and His Resurrection.

In between here and now

Saturday, the in-between day, the here and now of the not yet. 

There are many of us there already.

The diagnosis has come, and it is not good.

There are broken relationships, those who have sat face to face, now sit back to back. No longer speaking.

Children who have rebelled, wander in a land faraway.

Sickness or illness has visited and refused to leave. It lingers and you grow weary. You long for relief.

Someone we loved has passed from this life into the next and we are in the wilderness, looking for water.

Finances are tight, and you wonder – when will I be able to pay the next bill?

Your child is in the hospital and you don’t know which way it will go.

You struggle with anxiety and depression and you wonder if you will ever be glad again?

It is as if we are holding our breath.

Waiting.

We are sad, confused, and afraid. Is it okay grieve our losses? Do we have to suck it up and act like everything is okay? 

Day of mourning

Saturday, is the day to mourn, to wonder, to think that nothing makes sense.

Will it ever be all right?

Has hope really died after all?

In Jesus’ time, though He had spoken to them of Resurrection, they couldn’t put it together. Or understand what He meant.

All they really knew was their shock, bereavement, disbelief? What on earth are they to do now?

They did not know what we know now.

Certainty had vanished, doubt, fear and anguish filled their days.

Enter into the darkness

Today, this Saturday – give yourself permission to be present to the now and the not yet. To the wound of loss, to the death of a certain hope, to sorrow, grief and loss.

“In the dead time that lies between Good Friday and Easter Sunday we encounter the terror of our own impotence. There is no magic, no word, no clever formula to bring him back; to restore the dream and secure the hope. We go on living but can we trust life again? …This day holds us in its bleak starkness.

…In the emptiness of waiting, we begin to learn something that the god of this world cannot bear, the knowledge that it does not want us to know: at the very point of our failure and betrayals, when when we taste our own impotence and limit, if we are not afraid to live in his absence, we discover him.

Holy Saturday is his time. It is the time when we learn to trust his sacrifice of love which death can neither subjugate nor comprehend. In Holy Saturday…{he} calls us more intimately to his side. In the purifying darkness of Holy Saturday we discover the Sabbath of our waiting. We come to end of our way and the beginning of his. It is only Christ who can carry us over into Easter Morning and so it is with all the Holy Saturdays of our life.

James Hanvey

Sit with me here in the dark?

We’ll wait together – for Sunday.

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