On Your Most Painful Days, Remember Holy Saturday
*This is an updated and revised post originally called ‘Holy Saturday is Hard, but Not Hopeless’ from 4/3/2021
Some days and seasons are darker than others. We need to learn to endure the gray, depressing periods of life because the likelihood we will face them is high. More than that, God’s grace and presence is the help we need in these dark hours. If we are being honest, it can feel like we are utterly alone on our most painful days.
Sometimes, a medical prognosis can threaten premature immortality. A gray season might overtake us without cause or explanation.
Worse yet, is the death of a loved one. There are numerous people on my prayer list who have recently lost a spouse or a child. Learning to endure the death of a loved one is a guarantee that you will experience hopelessly, hard days.
Where do you turn when God is silent in the darkness?
Easter Sunday is the Day of hope, of bright, new beginnings, but we have to pass through Good Friday and Holy Saturday to get there.
Holy Saturday does not get much attention in the life of the Church. Most of us mark Maundy Thursday with communion, Good Friday with a dark liturgy of worship, and Easter Sunday with an explosive celebration.
Holy Saturday is the day that we need to acknowledge God’s silence. This day is one in which we sense God’s inaction. Holy Saturday is the day we begin to feel the sting of death and sense the sadness that death has spoken the final word.
It is true that we need to let Holy Saturday speak to us and do its terrible work, but I’m still sorry to say that death really sucks. Death is a terrible reality in our human experience. I am glad to know that Jesus wept outside the tomb of His friend Lazarus. It lets me know that God is familiar with the deepest ache of human loss.
On Good Friday, Jesus cried out a prayer of abandonment, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Holy Saturday tempts us to believe that there is no rescue on hopelessly, hard days.
Holy Saturday feels like abandonment
Our theology tells us that God is always present for us whether times are good or bad. It doesn't always feel like that though, does it? Sometimes we feel hopelessly abandoned.
My wife Gail, the mother of our six children, underwent spinal surgery in 2013 to remove a tumor that was compressing her spinal cord. This was the second time in a span of six years that she has had this specific surgery. Gail had just given birth to Wesley in January and was devastated that she would have to stop nursing her new little boy.
Her recovery from her first surgery in 2006 was amazing. Within a week she was walking up the stairs of our home.
Gail’s recovery from the second surgery in March 2013 was excruciatingly difficult. After spending a few days in ICU at York Hospital she was moved to a long-term rehabilitation hospital to learn how to walk again. For the longest time, she had very little awareness of her left leg which rendered the most simple tasks like walking or sitting very difficult and likely impossible without rehab. She would end up also enduring a season of radiation to eradicate the likelihood of another tumor returning. The radiation made it painful for her to swallow and uncomfortable to eat. As she was making progress on regaining awareness of her leg, she was rapidly losing weight.
In December of that same year, I can still recall the glee Gail felt as she was finally turning the corner. She found so much joy in being able to climb a chair to decorate our Christmas tree. Hope was so alive for Gail.
About two weeks later we received one of those terrible late-night phone calls. Gail’s Dad, Terry, had suffered a heart attack and was dead at the age of 63.
Those first few weeks really stung. The next two years of our life though felt like one long Holy Saturday.
These painful moments can lead us to believe that God has abandoned us.
Mary Magdalene must have felt the same way on Holy Saturday. She was a tormented outcast who was healed by Jesus and had been welcomed as part of His entourage. Mary deeply loved Jesus. He was everything to her!
Holy Saturday must have been so disappointing for Mary. We don’t have a record of what she did on Saturday. As a Jew, Mary’s activity on the Sabbath would have been very restricted. There was not much she could do on Holy Saturday.
The silence of Saturday must have signaled a new normal that was so, so disappointing to embrace. Jesus had filled her life with so much goodness, beauty, and purpose and now He was gone for good.
You know the feeling. You've been where Mary has been.
Something in your life has gone horribly awry and you're wondering "Where is God at the very moment that I need Him?"
A boyfriend has left you. Your marriage is in shambles. News just arrived that you've been laid off from your job and your second baby is due next week. The bank is foreclosing on your home. You can’t raise your left leg which feels like a dead stump because you’re too busy weeping. The doctors say that your loved one has six months to live.
These situations leave us asking "Why me?" but even worse, we start to voice "Where is God at the moment that I need Him most?"
Holy Saturday is a crushing silence
There are no more agonizing cries from Jesus on Holy Saturday, just crushing silence. His body lays silent in the tomb.
Easter Sunday is not so glorious until you contrast it with the shame of Good Friday, as Jesus was mocked as a weakling king hanging naked on a cross.
Easter Sunday is not so hopeful until it is cast against the helplessness of Holy Saturday, as His lifeless carcass lay cold in a dark tomb.
Nothing is going to happen on Holy Saturday. There is no life in Jesus and nothing but silence from heaven.
The weight of suffering in silence can be crushing.
Holy Saturday is hard but not hopeless
So many people are saying today that they can't believe in God because He did not prevent some awful thing from happening. He wasn't there. He was silent.
But just as surely as evil blares its harsh reality through life's megaphone, there is one thing God is definitely NOT saying to us: "I wasn't there. I don't know what it is like to feel utterly alone and helpless."
Jesus says: "I know what it feels like to drown in darkness. I know the shame of being mocked, of watching disappointed friends look at you as a failure. I know what it feels like to be utterly alone, forsaken, and hopeless. I tasted the cold grip of death."
Life in a Holy Saturday season is hard, but it is not hopeless.
High praise is coming on Sunday, but not until we pass through the crushing silence of Saturday.
If you find yourself in a Holy Saturday season of feeling abandoned by God, prayers unheard and unanswered, remember you are in good company.
Mary Magdalene was there, but oh how things would change for her in just 24 hours.
Jesus Himself was there on the cross. You can feel His resignation as He cried out, “Into Your hands, I commit my spirit.” At that moment, Jesus was offering faith in His Father which is echoed in Psalm 16:9-10 (ESV):
Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
Jesus voiced His trust on Good Friday that God would not abandon Him to the grave. He had no other option when He was at the end of His rope than to trust God. Even for Jesus, God was silent on Saturday.
Sometimes God is silent on Saturday. We might even have to endure Saturday seasons.
Holy Saturday is never the final word. During these dark times, you have to remember that God has not abandoned you. He is at work in your life for your good.
On your most painful days, remember Holy Saturday. It is not God’s final word for your life.
Sunday is on the way.
