In Holy Week, one day is hardly addressed and almost seems an afterthought. Saturday the Sabbath, when Good Friday is over—after the horror, the disillusionment, the pain and utter defeat of the darkest day on earth.
Jesus is dead. And all went silent.
No more screams from scourging, pounding of spikes through flesh into wood, cries of jubilance from a crowd or weeping from followers; no more earthquake, storm, graves thrown open or the ripping of thick fabric in the temple. The heavens rang with outrage and anguish, then went quiet.
God the Father is silent, also.
His wrath is spent, his heart broken, his only Son in the grave. He waits, knowing what is to come on Sunday will erase the horror of those few, yet never-ending hours.
Those who loved him were unable to tend to the body of their Lord because it was the Sabbath. Scripture tells us that they rested according to the commandment.
How could they rest? How could they stop? How could they allow the body of Jesus to lie in the grave without proper burial customs? Surely, they felt in their souls the magnitude of silence. Surely, they spent the day weeping and asking one another how this could have happened. Shock. Dismay. Disbelief. Discouragement and despair at the deepest level.
It was not the ending they expected. So, they grappled with the nonsensical present, tried to get their heads around reality—the new normal that was anything but.
So much like us.
When disaster hits. When our beloved dies. When the diagnosis is given. When the accident happens. When the funds are gone. The terror known.
We wrestle with silence from above.
Here is comfort: Jesus did, too. In Aramaic, the common language of the people, he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Even in this, he identified with us. In modern language the words could read, “WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?” In the tormented cry of Jesus, God’s own son, the epitome of abandonment was met with silence.
Silence is absence of sound, nothing being spoken on a particular subject. In the midst of the unexplainable, there are simply no words. This is where faith is proven, where mettle is tested, where decisions are made to follow or forsake.
Good Friday.
Silent Saturday.
These days must be walked through, experienced fully before the joy of Easter Sunday can be realized.
Faith believes: I am not alone.
Faith asures: Jesus is with me in the silence.
Faith waits: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Faith promises: There is still reason to hope.
Faith stakes a claim: Though he slay me, yet I will trust him.
On my silent Saturday, what will I choose? What will I speak to my soul?
I will walk through the days until Sunday comes.
I commit my life and my spirit into his hands.
I choose to hope in God.
I believe he is working in the waiting,
Even when he is silent in his love—
And joy comes in the morning.