Holy Saturday, the day in-between. Our Lord has been crucified and now we wait – wait for the celebration we know is to come – of resurrection, of life, of promise, and hope. But for now, we are suspended. Suspended in the grief of our Lord’s death – shocked by the brutality of Good Friday – perhaps more cognizant of our fallen ways. With a broken spirit, I am uncertain of how to go about this day. Some will go about the day as if it were any other Saturday – sleeping in, working out, doing household chores, runs to the dump, shopping, and if we are lucky to be free of snow, some early Spring yard work or a trek into the hills.

And why not? It is difficult to dwell in grief and uncertainty; to live with the darkness a day like Good Friday brings into our being. We want to move on – quickly – to the joys of life we know and are coming. We want to live in the triumphant brass and bold joyous singing and drink in the “Good News” of Easter morning. And so we do anything to distract us from what this day in the Christian belief system represents – Jesus Christ’s death and descent to hell and the numbness and fear felt by Jesus’s followers after the horrifying events of the previous twenty-four hours.  A day where a suddenly and frighteningly unknown future pierces the heart.

I know this day well, perhaps you do too.  I lived it after the deaths of my parents and the end of my marriage. Anyone who has been on the journey of life for a good distance is cognizant of what a great loss can do to upend your world.  The day after death.  The day after your heart is broken. The day after the divorce. The day after the job was lost. The day after the diagnosis. The day after a dream was shattered. The day after a part of your life has died. The day after a part of you has died. Today is the day after, where putting the pieces of life back together seems unimaginable; when the sheer shock of catastrophe that muted our feelings and sheltered us from the raging storm has worn off.

Today is the hard day.  Today is the painful day of initiation by reality. The time after the funeral when the calls and visits stop. The uneasy time between your diagnosis and treatment, when there is absolutely nothing you can do but wait. Today embodies the loneliness and the nothingness that invades the soul when friends no longer check in as they must get back to living their lives and your life is supposed to get back to normal. And isn’t that what we all really want to do – just get back to living our normal lives?

But the thing is, great loss changes you, forever. Normal will never look the same again. Great loss forever unsettles you from the life you once knew.  Life won’t be the same. You won’t be the same.  The shadow of The Cross will transform you.

It may harden you; it may fill you with bitterness or remorse. It may soften you and make you more present. In whatever manner, it will change you. And you find yourself here – on a day just like today. How will you live in it and how will you live it? How has the shadow of the cross changed you? Will you let it change you?

We’d all like to think the travesty of what happened on the cross wasn’t necessary. Surely, we had no part. But without the horrors of The Cross and the bleak uncertainty that reigns over This Day, we would not know the hope and promise of new life tomorrow – Easter Day – and every day – reigning in our lives as I write.

New life sprang from The Cross and in the tomb a history-changing transformation began and because of that, new life can spring from the cross you are in the shadow of now.

And so, as we face our shadows with life at times suspended, as we try to carry on – however unsettled and uncertain each day may be – remember Jesus also endured this Day After, this Time In-Between.  Trust that God is neither absent from nor inactive in your life.  God was creating a new vision of life that none on that day after Good Friday could imagine. We know that God raised Jesus from the depths, providing the ultimate turning point for time immemorial and God is not finished. He is never finished. God never stops creating us anew and He never stops loving us.

Today, God is at work – redeeming and restoring the whole of creation with His mercy and grace.  Let this be so.  Let His will be done.

Happy Easter!!!

“Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right. All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.”

Romans 5:18-22

Let your light so shine!!!