What About Saturday?

Afflictions. Adversities. Hardship. Pain. Problems. Suffering. Trials. Tribulations. Tragedies. Troubles. Whatever you call them they are not fun, and we usually do not want them. Job loss. A bad call from the doctor. The loss of a loved one. The loss of a loved pet. Divorce. Disease. Disaster. James 1:2-3 reads, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (NIV). Did you catch that? Trials of many kinds, can produce something positive. The Bible has a lot to say about suffering and most of what it says is positive. It is important to understand the Biblical theology of suffering as we spend a lot of our earthly time dealing with hard times, stuck in suffering, dealing with difficulties. It’s important to know what the Bible says so that we will be armed and ready, equipped to overcome. Suffering strikes just about everyone, just about everywhere, and it brings with it another line of questioning. Ever heard someone ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, “If I hurt so bad, why does God feel so far away?”, or even, “Why did God do this to me?” This is the hardest part about suffering; our faith is put to the test. Suffering challenges us to seek God in a whole new way, but sometimes it even alters the way that we perceive God. Pain brings with it a thousand seeds of doubt that can cause the heart to become hardened, and the soul calloused. If not guarded against you may wind up answering those tough questions the way that I once heard a man answer, “I used to love God, until . . .” Jesus’ disciples wrestled with issues much like these; reality did not meet their expectations, and they began to hurt. The disciples knew that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, the One who would bring peace to an oppressed Israel. And as the disciples followed Him, hoping and waiting for Jesus to rise up and rid Israel of the Roman oppression, He was crucified, and so were their hopes. All the plans they had, all the dreaming, gone. Can you imagine being one of Jesus’ disciples on the Friday that He was crucified? Can you imagine the despair? Can you feel their pain? Can you imagine the utter horror that they experienced? How did the disciples get through that event? How did they survive the worst day of their lives? What do you think went through their minds? Can you hear Thomas saying, “We gave up everything, and now He is gone”? Maybe Peter was thinking, “How could He be dead? He was the Messiah, the Christ, the one and only Son of God, . . . wasn’t He?” What would have gone through your mind? These men left families, homes, and careers, simply to follow Jesus and they were met with apparent defeat. How would you feel? Their dreams met death that Friday, and for a moment, it looked as if death would prevail. The painful seeds of doubt began to emerge, and those seeds began to bring forth weeds of bitterness. Whatever it was that the disciples began to think and feel, life had just thrown them a curveball, and their circumstances had drastically changed. The disciples did not listen when Jesus told them about His death, so they didn’t expect it when it came. They didn’t know how to react. They also did not understand His teachings about His resurrection, so they had no idea what was about to occur just a couple of days later. They had no idea that Jesus would be standing in their midst, alive forevermore. How very different things looked that first Easter Sunday! But on Friday they could not see ahead. Their vision was blurred by a flood of tears, and a monsoon of fear. The disciples could only see the moment. They only knew that Jesus was dead, they were alone, and they would be next on the Pharisees’ hit list. There is no way to really know just how bad, how utterly horrible, that day really was, but you do know how bad a “Friday” experience has been in your own life. But what about Saturday? What about the time period after the tragedy and before the triumph? What about that Saturday? It is amazing enough that they got through Friday, but how did the disciples survive Saturday? Saturday – the period of endless questions without answers, of desperate searching without finding, of waiting with no end. The disciples’ theology was challenged and their faith was put to the test. But how did they endure? What about that day? The day of waiting, of questioning and soul-searching, when you can feel every second go by, and it feels like God is a million miles away? What about that day? What about Saturday? What do you do on a day like that? What do you do in the waiting room of life? The Bible does not tell us much about that Saturday. In fact, amidst the four gospels there are only two direct references to that day, a total of seven verses. But those seven verses, when viewed with other verses throughout the Bible, hold a great deal of wisdom, and a tremendous amount of healing and hope. We spend a lot of our lives in “Saturday,” between tragedy and triumph, desperately waiting for a resurrection experience, so what the Bible does tell us about that Saturday is important. The Bible gives us the key to surviving the storm, to keeping faith amidst the fire. The lessons we can learn from that Saturday will help us to survive the “Saturdays” of our own lives and survive them in such a way that we grow closer to Jesus instead of further away. So what about Saturday?