Saturday

Every Good Friday my mom would have us wear red and black, a reminder of Jesus’s blood being poured out for our sins. 

Every Easter Sunday we’d dress up for church and have over anyone who wanted to join us afterwards for lunch and festivities, and my mom always tried to train our bird in the “He is risen/He is risen indeed” call and response. 

Saturday was always the day in between. 

The first time it really took on meaning in my mind was during a college lecture when my professor mentioned it being the darkest day in history because it was the day the Messiah was dead and hope was lost. 

Over the last few years my love for Easter has grown, but it’s because my love for Good Friday and Saturday have grown. I have a passion for the days preceding Easter. They burn within me because I genuinely love them, and that love is not one born of happiness but of the desperation and darkness that pave the way for resurrection light. 

I wrote a few years ago, “Today we see how irreparably broken we are. Today the Son of God is dead. All we have is our human strength, and we see how truly insurmountable our sins are. But tomorrow Jesus is alive. Tomorrow we have victory. Tomorrow our hope is fulfilled and our model, our intercessor, our salvation lives on.”

Why Saturday? 

Why a day where Satan seemed to have won, where restoration and deliverance were lost, where darkness and grief covered the earth? Why didn’t resurrection follow on the heels of the cross? 

The first result of my google search is from the Bible Project and says, “Jesus was adamant about the third day because it represents God’s pattern of creating new life and establishing a covenant with humanity.” The explanation I’ve heard throughout my life is that it gave less cause for doubt and denial; Jesus was dead dead—days had gone by; it wasn’t a fluke. 

And I think both of those explanations are true and good, but I think there’s more than that. 

God wants to show us that He paves the way for grief. That He sits in it with us, not merely holding space for us but grieving with us. 

Our God isn’t afraid of suffering. 

Tomorrow is victory, but today is the darkest storm imaginable.

Why have a day between death and life? Why weep over Lazarus’s death? 

God knew Jesus would be resurrected; that His very death was the means of salvation and life. Jesus knew that in a few moments He would raise Lazarus. Why grieve? Why weep? 

Because restoration to come doesn’t diminish grief. Because God wants us to know that it’s good to grieve over brokenness. It’s not a failure to trust Him or to believe the promise but a natural response to being image bearers in a broken world; we grieve because God grieves. 

As Christians, we’re often quick to brightside things. We look to the end victory, forgetting (or trying to forget) the current suffering because it makes us feel more religious to feel hopeful. The deeper our suffering, the more this breaks down, which often means we pile guilt onto our grief. 

But God gave us Saturday. 

God gave us the reminder that He holds space for lament. God gave us the freedom to mourn, to be grieved, to feel the darkness. And He promises us that resurrection life will always be on the other side even if we can’t yet see through the darkness of Saturday.