How to live through Easter Saturday

Hello my friends!
I wrote this piece last Easter and it feels relevant again today. 
Wherever this Easter weekend finds you, may you know God's peace, comfort and hope. May the Easter story come to you in fresh ways to remind you of how much you are loved.

How to live through Easter Saturday

At the end of the Good Friday service, we sang,

One final breath he gave
As heaven looked away
The son of God was laid in darkness…

An unresolved chord hung in the air as the band stopped playing and the image of a heart monitor appeared on the screen. It beeped twice, then made one continuous sound as it flat-lined. The lights went out and people sat in the dark before leaving the building in silence. My friend and I walked back to the car without talking, wanting to linger in the mystery of the moment.

As the church, we faithfully retell our stories because they remind us of our family history. As we let them work in us, they reshape and reform us. They beckon us to join in and to see things from a different perspective. Our stories make room for us and show us that another way of being in the world is possible.

On Good Friday, what we recall is that all is not as it should be. The reality of death hits home. We identify with the pain of grief and rejection and destroyed hopes. We think of all the things that weren’t supposed to be like this. Good Friday is our opportunity to sit in the shadow of the cross with our broken dreams and unanswered questions.

Of course, the church will celebrate the resurrection on Easter Sunday, and rightly so, as it is the grand finale of the story. But many people, including me, will still be living with the tension of loss, heartache and confusion come Sunday. Three days will not have resolved all our issues, just at the previous three months, or three years have not either.

So we continue to wait in the darkness. We live in our Easter Saturday season when all is dead and the silence is deafening. We stay present to our questions, doubts, fears and pain. We find solace in books and song lyrics. We stay open to safe people and small mercies. We keeping living in this story because we have read ahead to the ending. We keep the faith that our resurrection, too, is on its way.

 

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