Can you imagine being one of Jesus' disciples on the Friday that He was crucified? Can you imagine the despair? Can you feel their pain? Can you imagine the utter horror that they experienced? Imagine how Peter felt as his soul was crushed after denying his Lord three times. Imagine being John, helplessly watching as Jesus suffered on the cross. Picture Thomas, Andrew, or one of the others, heading for the hills as the angry mob swarmed Jesus to arrest Him. How did the disciples get through that event? How did they survive the worst day of their lives?
What do you think went through their minds? Can you hear Thomas saying, “We gave up everything, and now He is gone”? Maybe Peter was thinking, “How could He be dead? He was the Messiah, the Christ, the one and only Son of God, wasn't He?” What would have gone through your mind? These men left families, homes, and careers, simply to follow Jesus and they were met with apparent defeat. How would you feel?
Their dreams met death that Friday, and for a moment, it looked as if death would prevail. The painful seeds of doubt began to emerge, and those seeds began to bring forth weeds of bitterness.
Whatever it was that the disciples began to think and feel, life had just thrown them a curveball, and their circumstances had drastically changed. The disciples did not listen when Jesus told them about His death, so they didn't expect it when it came. They didn't know how to react.
They also did not understand His teachings about His resurrection, so they had no idea what was about to occur just a couple of days later. They had no idea that Jesus would be standing in their midst, alive forevermore. How very different things looked that first Easter Sunday!
But on Friday they could not see ahead. Their vision was blurred by a flood of tears, and a monsoon of fear. The disciples could only see the moment. They only knew that Jesus was dead, they were alone, and they would be next on the Pharisees' hit list. There is no way to really know just how bad, how utterly horrible, that day really was, but you do know how bad a “Friday” experience has been in your own life.
There is a sermon that has been preached many times by many people, “It's Friday, but Sunday's Coming.” But what about Saturday? What about the time period after the tragedy and before the triumph? What about the period between death and resurrection, between apparent defeat and absolute victory? What about that Saturday?
It is amazing enough that they got through Friday, but how did the disciples survive Saturday? Saturday - the period of endless questions without answers, of desperate searching without finding, of waiting with no end. The disciples' theology was challenged and their faith was put to the test. But how did they endure?
What about that day? The day of waiting, of questioning and soul-searching, when you can feel every second go by, and it feels like God is a million miles away? What about that day? What about Saturday? What do you do on a day like that?
How does that mother hold on to her sanity as she holds her bed-ridden child's hand, when the days turn into weeks, and the weeks into months?
How does the out-of-work executive stay strong when it seems like every single job in the world is filled, but the bills keep coming?
What do you do in the waiting room of life?
The Bible does not tell us much about that Saturday. In fact, amidst the four gospels there are only two direct references to that day, a total of seven verses. But those seven verses, when viewed with other verses throughout the Bible, hold a great deal of wisdom, and a tremendous amount of healing and hope.
We spend a lot of our lives in “Saturday,” between tragedy and triumph, desperately waiting for a resurrection experience, so what the Bible does tell us about that Saturday is important. The Bible gives us the key to surviving the storm, to keeping faith amidst the fire.
All of us have either faced severe tragedy, or are going to face it somewhere along the path of life, so we need to be ready. We need to understand that:
· when dreams fizzle, we can not let our fire fizzle too, Peter learned that.
· when God feels so far away, He is actually at His closest, Mary Magdalene learned that.
· we need to get through the loss without losing faith, Thomas learned that.
· no matter what barriers seem to be between ourselves and Jesus, He is always in our midst, all the disciples learned that.
The lessons we can learn from that Saturday will help us to survive the “Saturdays” of our own lives, and survive them in such a way that we grow closer to Jesus instead of further away.
So what about Saturday?