living the Saturday.

Yesterday was Good Friday; the day Jesus was crucified on a cross. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday; the day He conquered death and rose from the grave.

So, what does that make today? Saturday (clearly, I have learned something from teaching elementary school). Today is Saturday. The day in-between Friday and Sunday. The day in-between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The day, for most of the world, that will be lived like a normal day. All around, people will be walking through today without thought or question. So often when we think about the story of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, we focus on Friday and Sunday, but never Saturday. We rarely discuss the importance of Saturday, and I think that it's just as much as part of the story. Saturday is the middle, the in-between, the waiting, hoping, and knowing what's here but not yet. Saturday is the nitty-gritty; the split second pause between death and life.

See, when we skip over Saturday, we're missing a huge part of the story. Saturday is the yearning and hoping. On Friday night, we remember and recognize and feel the weight of Jesus hanging on a cross for our sins. In the end, He rises. Jesus triumphs over death. There is hope on Friday, but we don't get to see it fulfilled until Sunday morning when the tomb is empty.

Saturday is the middle of the story. On Saturday, we wait. We know full-well that Christ rises on Sunday. We know the end of the story. The end of the story is not sin and death. Death does not win. The end of the story is hope, redemption, joy, and new life.

But Saturday is the middle of the story. On Saturday, He has not yet risen. On Saturday, the work that Jesus did on the cross is done. It is finished. It is here, but not yet. So on Saturday, we hope. On Saturday, we hold onto the hope that we know is coming but we know is not yet here. On Saturday, we hope in the resurrection and the promise of new life, but we live in the waiting.

So much of our lives are spent living the Saturday. I could argue that our lives are one big, continuous Saturday. We live in the middle, the meantime, the waiting. We live in what's here but not yet. I love Easter weekend, because in a season of life that feels endless and tiresome and unknown and uncertain (maybe this is not just a season, but all of life), I can cling to hope. I can hope in Sunday, in the resurrection. I can grasp, in the middle of the story, that there is something great to come. 


That's why Saturday is such an important part of the story. On Saturday of Easter weekend, we are reminded that the story is not over. We are given the opportunity to sit in hope, to marvel at the mystery of what's here and happening and what's yet to come.