I’ve always thought the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter is an odd time for Christians, in a Twilight Zonish kind of way. Yesterday we re-experienced the tragedy of Christ’s crucifixion, yet we know the glory that awaits us tomorrow. Today, we continue to mourn even as we sense the celebration ahead.
There’s something in this peculiar Saturday that intrigues me. It quietly seems to open a window in the soul that was firmly shut on Friday and is usually overlooked on Sunday when the whole roof blows off. The window opens to reveal a world where spiritual gravity seems to flow in reverse. Instead of good flying high over evil, it plummets to the ground, caught in some strange gravitational pull. A black hole sun rises to cast darkness over the earth.
In such a world, evil can’t be overcome by sheer force of glory. Evil can only be conquered if it is first allowed to conquer. Good wins only by losing.
I don’t think these dynamics disappear after today. Saturday only reveals something unexpected about the world, much like quantum mechanics reveals the everyday strangeness of quarks.
I experience this world whenever I anxiously face the future, praying for a miracle, only to hear God whispering for me to pray instead for the fortitude to endure the worst case scenario.
If I can find that window in my soul that looks out over the peculiar landscape between Good Friday and Easter, what I experience is an eclipse of hope and a plunging into deep darkness. But that’s not all I experience.
Wandering in the dark, I discover I am far from alone. Something lives in the darkness, quite familiar to the writer of Psalm 139: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you” (v. 11-12).
Once I face my darkness and discover a living Presence at work even there, I lose my fear of it. And when I lose my fear, its power over me is broken. I know, that whatever else the future may hold, it also contains a tomb I will leave behind empty.
Exactly. You’ve said it all–and so beautifully.
Eric,
I enjoyed this post, and I concur 100%. We often tend to think that somehow God is more present in our lives when things are going well and we’ve got it all together. And, when the opposite is true, we tend to think that God has left us and we’re alone. But, realizing that God is there, regardless of whether we’ve ascended to the heights of heaven or made our bed is hell is a powerful lesson to learn. God wasn’t in limbo between the cross and the empty tomb. He was just as much at work in the world accomplishing his purpose and plan as he was the day Jesus stepped upon the scene.
Thanks for the reminder!
Thanks Eric. I believe that we can’t grasp anything unless we can at least conceive of everything. That means the evil stuff and the bad stuff have to be there with the rest of it. Our senses tell us that it’s true…we see evil acts and just thoughtless acts all the time. Probably commit them ourselves from time to time. Even random acts. My universe allows for those to happen without a sense of blame on a deity that we can’t really understand. Blaming God rips the foundations out from living into our humanity in a Kingodm that is far from our fantasy ideal of a quiet place where nothing goes wrong.
Well said. I feel this same way about the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter but never had the words. It feels like being in limbo. It’s a very short window between grief and celebration which is an unusual order of events that doesn’t happen often.
Thank you for putting this into words. We were discussing the “reverse feeling” of this Saturday at work today and couldn’t quite define it in terms that expressed what we felt. The power of Good Friday, wanting to look back and experience the reality of the darkness, but feeling the pull of the light of Sunday already. You have given me the vocabulary to explore the unexpected feelings. A peculiar landscape, indeed.
Beautiful, freedom from fear of darkness, the entire Christ Story, is like the four seasons, and all that we live and are, the lessons are everywhere and the entire Lenten, Easter story continues to teach and remind us this every year, just like the four, seasons. Birth, living, falling, darkness…..I love the twighlight zone picture, for me that’s always February and March, on a shorter lesson, the stretch between Good Friday and Easter. Thanks Eric, for always igniting such a bright light and perspective on the same “old” story, in such powerful, wise,and exciting ways!