Holy Waiting
Friday Highlight – Holy Waiting
The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday has had several names throughout history. Depending on your tradition, it’s been called Great Saturday, Low Saturday, Hallelujah Saturday, Black Saturday, Saturday of Light, the Great Sabbath, and Saturday of the Glory, among others. In the western traditions of the Church, it’s typically been called Holy Saturday.
Holy Saturday. The day between Christ’s death and his resurrection. The day his friends and followers mourned his death and probably felt a huge array of emotions, including fear (John 20:19). It’s easy for us to skip past Holy Saturday because we know the end of the story. We know the triumph and celebration coming on Sunday morning. But I think it’s important for us to slow down and spend some time with the disciples on this hard and holy day. From their perspective, it was probably the worst day of their lives. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment: You’ve been following Jesus for a while, maybe years, and you’ve come to believe that he really is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the true King of Israel. Or at least, you used to believe it. Now you’re not so sure. You thought he was here to overthrow the Romans, but you just saw those very Romans beat him, mock him, and nail him to a jagged piece of wood, and then you saw him die. How would you reconcile that with your experience of the man? How would you feel in this moment?
As Christians, we need to get better at waiting on God. In his excellent book Waiting Isn’t a Waste, Mark Vroegop says, “Waiting is not just part of our humanity; it’s vital to Christianity. That’s why the Old and New Testaments talk about it so often. Like many other things, including suffering and the crucifixion, God aims to transform what is painful and confusing. That’s also why believers are commanded to wait. From God’s perspective, it’s good. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.”1 And later he defines waiting simply as, “to look with hope.” The disciples had lost hope. They probably spent Holy Saturday in shocked silence, working to accept that they were wrong about Jesus, and processing what life would look like for them going forward. It was a horrible moment. But God was still working.
As you pause for a few moments on Holy Saturday to sit and wait with the disciples, inspect where your mind wanders. What are you worried about? Are there any areas of your life where you’ve lost hope? Have your expectations been dashed, and you’re left in shocked silence, processing what life will look like going forward? You’re not alone. If you’re a Christian, waiting is a big part of your family tradition. We’re commanded to wait. In the big picture, we’re all waiting for Jesus to return. But in the “small picture,” as you’re waiting on God, he is with you. He has not abandoned you. He has not left you as an orphan (John 14:18). Let that sink in. The King of the universe has adopted you as his child, and he does not ignore his children.
When we face a gap between the known and the unknown, we can fill it with a whole host of things: Fear, worry, control, anger, isolation, doubt, etc. What are you filling the gap with? Christian, I want to encourage you to fill it with trust. Trust God in the waiting. In this instance, the disciples didn’t, but to be fair, they didn’t know what would happen on Sunday. To them, Jesus’ tomb was still occupied, but it’s empty for us. They had to wait for God to answer their questions, and sometimes we do too. Trust him in your waiting. It is never wasted. He is using it to conform you to the image of the Son and grow your capacity for hope, and “hope does not put us to shame” (Rom 5:5).
Lord, meet us and sustain us in our waiting. Guide us, protect us, and provide for us. And let our waiting cause us to grow slowly to look more like you.
1 Mark Vroegop, Waiting Isn’t a Waste: The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in the Uncertainties of Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024)