This is going to be a quick, unedited post as it is an ungodly hour of the morning and I am headed off to celebrate a great accomplishment with a friend.  Later, Evan gets his hearing aid.  Who knows how much I’ll have left after that?

But right now here is what I’m thinking: Today is Saturday.  The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter.  What a long, long Saturday it must have been before that first Easter Sunday.

Friday and Sunday get all the glory but I have to think that Saturday must have been a time of such intense grief as to be almost unbearable.  It must have been, in a way, what hell feels like — the absolute void of God.

Imagine what it would be like to have God with you, right by your side, then poof — he was gone.  What sort of black hole would that leave in your soul?  It was, after all, the Sabbath.  They had all day to sit around and do nothing but mourn.  I wonder if they wailed, or did they do their mourning silently?

Imagine the dashed hopes, the deep depression, the absolute longing to just have Jesus with them one more time.  To touch his face, to laugh with him again, to be infuriatingly confused by all his sand-drawings and nonsensical stories.

They didn’t know Sunday was coming.  They anxiously waited to tend to him, to serve him one last time.  They woke at the crack of dawn the next day, desperate to go and care for his body.  But Saturday — Saturday was a day when there was nothing to do but ponder the incredible loss — a loss of a friend, a teacher, a trusted leader, a brother, a son.

And a future — they believed Jesus to be the one who would save them from Roman rule.  They understood the Kingdom that he promised to be gone with his last breath.

Imagine the horrible despair.  Friday had been horrible.  To witness torture of such magnitude would scar anybody but to see someone you loved — there are no words.  And Saturday the images must have haunted them, all day long.  They may have covered their ears to try to stop his screams of pain from echoing in their heads.  Shut their eyes tight to try to squeeze the images from their minds.  But they had to endure it, for they could not busy themselves with the work of the day, for the work of the day was rest.

They had no idea that Sunday was coming.  For all they knew, Saturday stretched out before them like a vast, cold, god-less hell.

But meanwhile, God was up to something.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your grace for this this completely unedited, first-draft stream of consciousness!