Always Saturday
wondering where is the Resurrected life
I went to sleep Saturday night, skeptical, but hopeful that all would feel miraculously new on Sunday morning. Easter. Surely I would feel it. And yet, as I woke up my first thought was, “this does not feel like a resurrected life.” Easter was a good day in our house, full of lemon ducks, and egg hunts and a wonderful church service in which I cried the whole way through. A constant, slow trickle of salty tears that would not stop.
Why was I crying when Saturday had come and gone. Or had it?
On one level the calendar day marking Holy Saturday 2024 has indeed passed. The day in which we remember those hours between Good Friday and Easter. They are precious and important. And yet, this writer of a newly released book on the very subject was radio silent. Why? Well, the only way I know how to say it is I have been living my book deeply and therefore have had no ability to promote said book.
The thing is, it is always Saturday.
Maybe you are feeling the disconnect too. As if we fast forwarded to the empty tomb while the life around us is not yet resurrected. I think understanding Holy Saturday as more than a day is what helps me make sense of all of it. It gives us a way to frame the waiting, the hoping, the longing, the despair that we still feel.
What do we do as we wait? Saturday is the answer.
Perhaps you too are in Holy Saturday at this very moment. If not now, you have been before and you will again, and it’s not the easiest place to be. Holy Saturday is what I call the time when we are waiting on God. Perhaps there has been grief, trauma, disappointment, the death of a dream, and things are not as they are supposed to be. And yet, we must carry on living.
Our days are spent living in a broken place, recovering from a loss or a hurt, holding on to joy and hope, longing for peace and navigating the in-between we find ourselves in. These things-death, disappointment, grief-are the things of life. They are inescapable. A marriage ends, a family member dies, a friend betrays us, a job is lost, a dream remains unrealized. These things happen all throughout our lives. We live, for the most part, in the in-between days of Holy Saturday again and again and again.
Over these past few weeks/months as I have been living the Saturday before me I have truly felt the most peace when I am living out the practices I learned when writing Peace in the Dark. It is not that the book contains the “miraculous five point plan to find peace” but rather that the book is an honest account of what we see when we look to Jesus and his disciples. It’s him. Do I remember that all the time? Nope. Do I still bury my head and allow my shoulders to rise to my ears as I try to bear it all? Yep. But…every now and again I remember and boy, it is good.
Turns out I lived and wrote the book I needed. Because I am not done living it.
I believe there must be some people who live the Sunday life the majority of the time. That just isn’t me. And if it isn’t you either, I want you to imagine that there is an invitation of peace to be found. Even on Saturday.
Peace in the Dark is not just for Easter week and is available wherever books are sold. Might I suggest supporting an independent bookstore such as The Bookshelf
And of course at Amazon (reviews welcome!)
You can pickup my other books Life Surrendered or Break Bread Together:
Just wondering…are you my twin? So many things you write remind me of my own experiences. I think I must be a Saturday person and am learning to live with this reality while expressing the joy of Christ despite it.
I feel like learning to live in the peace of Saturday is the work of a lifetime. Thank God that work doesn’t start when we finally come to terms with that… but rather, far before we ever understood what and where we live. I’m only now in my midlife learning that Saturday is its own kind of gift.