Easter Saturday

The tide may be out, but it always returns

No one likes waiting. Or at least I don’t.

It’s a bit annoying then that the Bible tells us to do just that, again and again.

“Wait for the Lord.”

“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”

“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.”

In a culture of life hacks and next day delivery there isn’t much space for waiting.

And so I was drawn to think about the day after the crucifixion but the day before the resurrection. The forgotten day of Holy Week, Easter Saturday.

I can’t even imagine the feeling of devastation Jesus’ followers must have felt, he’d spent so long explaining to them what was going to happen but they still didn’t understand. Many had left, Peter had denied him, evil had triumphed and they were left questioning everything.

After a night of no sleep, minutes must have felt like hours, hours like days, the day itself like a week.

And isn’t that so often the same for us, moments of crisis, our dark night of the soul, the diagnosis we receive, the crushing loss of a loved one, the unanswerable questions of why. They leave us questioning everything.

We look at the empty cross and ask “are you really coming back?”.

Well yesterday the invitation was to be present to our sin, so today the invitation is to be present to our doubts. Don’t bury them, don’t deny them, engage them and let them bubble up to the surface. As Wendell Berry beautifully writes in one of this Sabbath poems: “Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, and the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song.”

So on a day of waiting and doubting, I hope this liturgy brings hope to any situations in your life that feel hopeless.

The tide may be out, but it always returns.

Easter Saturday - Tom White

Here we wait, here we wonder

Waiting in the pain

Waiting as we weep

Waiting to see if what He said would happen really will

“My God, my God why have you forsaken me” rings in our ears

Hope hangs by a thread

We cling to it for dear life

If Good Friday is for the sinner

Easter Saturday is for the doubter

The questioner

The sceptic

The uncertain

For those times when we cannot see, but we know the path we must tread

For those times when trusting God is the hardest thing to do, but we know it is the thing we must do

The tide may be out, but it always returns

A lapping builds to a gushing

A gushing builds to a surging

A surging builds to a roaring

The roaring of the tide, the glory of the morning, the joy of the resurrection

We wait for the Lord and in His word we place our hope