We have lived through Good Friday. Contemplating and meditating on the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, the ultimate price, paid by God's own Son, for our redemption.
Good Friday is a long and emotional day. It is a day of fasting, so we feel a bit more tired and maybe more emotional than usual.
Then we wake up to Saturday morning. We have a sense of quiet.
Tomorrow is Easter! We sense the coming Joy, but it is still really a day of Prayer.
This is the day when we think about what is to come. We think about our own lives, our path to Christ and our struggles. We all have crosses. We meditated on them yesterday, but the cross has been carried and we know that there is Resurrection Joy at Easter.
So Holy Saturday is that hopeful waiting that we do so many days of our lives. Not the intense prayer of Crisis, but the rather suspenseful prayer of Hope.
The Apostles didn't have the Resurrection to look forward to on that first Holy Saturday. They really weren't sure how all that was going to play out. They knew that Jesus said he would rise, but just how was He going to achieve it and what were they to do in the meantime? Would they be arrested and put to death as well? They didn't have the "Blessed Assurance" that we know every year at Easter.
We have today to pray and thank God for His Great Love, and for making us part of the Easter story. There will be a day when we will each have our very own Easter! What incredible Hope that brings. If we live our lives in Christ we will live forever in Christ.
Romans 8:35-39
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Tomorrow is the day of Celebration. Today is the day of Hope.
