A pocket of time separates Good Friday and Easter Sunday – a day we often ignore because we don’t celebrate that day – we just wait.
We live through Saturday, anticipating Sunday.
After the execution of Jesus, the disciples – both men and women – huddled together in fear. At least one of them, Peter, hid alone, ashamed at his refusal to acknowledge the Lord.
They waited during Saturday, daring to hope and waiting to see what Sunday might bring.
We are often stuck in the same time warp.
My son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In one moment, an astrocytoma’s ferocious prognosis changed our lives. Surgery, chemo and radiation. Five years of MRI’s, oncologist appointments and medical bills.
A lifetime of Saturdays, waiting, hoping, praying. Then the glorious ending – a miraculous healing. The Sunday arrived with joy, but the Saturday required guts and perseverance.
A seed germinated in my creative soul – the idea for a novel. Hundreds of Saturdays working, revising, praying and submitting to publishers. Then the good news and more Saturdays until finally – the finished manuscript became a book, “The Unraveling of Reverend G.”
My mother stepped into the shadows of Alzheimers. Thousands and thousands of Saturdays morphed into 36-hour days as she changed from a mature and intelligent woman into a child-like version of herself.
Day follows day and years repeat until one day it ends. We will lower her shell into the ground. She knows this. We anticipate and dread it each day.
The crosses of our lives thrust us into expanded weekends as we experience pain, separation and the perseverance of waiting.
We know on some level that the pain does end, that Resurrection follows Crucifixion.
But it is the waiting during our Saturdays that tends to shove us into discouragement. Our Saturdays seem interminable as we beg God to send us Easter sunrise.
Yet within our Saturdays, as our character is tested and our perseverance questioned, we learn the most about faith.
For hope that endures requires massive faith and teeth-grinding strength for the length of the journey.
Because we must wait through the Saturdays, the end result seems that much sweeter when Easter Sunday finally arrives.
©2013 RJ Thesman