Sunday healed what Friday broke but Saturday finds us holding our breath, stuck in the middle.
Heaven waits patient and ready and I wait for redemption, reconciliation, restoration.
I see the body broken and the Body broken and I weep and wail at the foot of the cross on Sundays and the foot of my bed on Mondays and all I see is pain and all I hear is “wait” and all around this world is empty and bleeding.
When your world is one long Saturday, when the only way you’re sure you’re still living is the beating of your bleeding heart, when the one word to escape your lips is a running stream of “why,”joy feels like a gift someone forgot to give you.
What happens when you don’t feel Jesus anymore?
Because Friday happens and the world – your world- cracks and opens and swallows you up whole and when dawn finally breaks and the dark clouds roll back, when you wake certain it’s over and was really just one long, cruel joke…
…and you find yourself sitting in empty Saturday…
What do you do when you can’t find Jesus? When He’s all but left and no matter where you look He’s gone, died, left you alone and splitting at the sides with grief?
What then?
You can run run all the way to where you last saw Him but even there, He’s disappeared without a note or a goodbye.
Our seasons of Saturdays aren’t too different from a Saturday long past when the world was dark and the tears flowed and mixed with the blood poured.
We pray for Him to come through, to come with us, to simply come and be with us.
We pray hard and harder and claim the promises from His lips and His Word. We hold our breath in anticipation but the earth shakes and then He’s gone.
While we beg for a do-over, three words to un-say, two mistakes to un-make, one moment passed without following through, Heaven is busy counting their own three, two, one…
When the Word made flesh took His final breath we think the book is closing and we’re reading The End but a page simply turns as the world turns and a great change happens in the heavenlies.
The waiting room of earth was filled with worry as the door to the re-birthing of souls opened wide.
When you’re stuck in the hurt and you’ve prayed for years for one thing, just one thing, and you think the word “wait” is all that’s left to hold onto, you have Him too.
You can have confidence in Him even when we don’t feel Him because He is not a feeling.
The feelings of doubt and grief and brokenness are real but feelings come and go, they fade and wane with time, but He is a constant even when we don’t feel Him.
Run fast to the grave, to the place where your dreams have gone to die and you just can’t find Him anymore, and see with your eyes that He is there in the questions you’re asking.
He is there in the hurt. He didn’t leave you alone in it, but with eyes glazed with tears we see a gardener in the place of our risen Lord.
We can get so stuck in Saturday that we almost miss the coming of Sunday.
We can sit in the feelings so long that we no longer feel Him, but He hasn’t moved an inch.
He will not leave you.
Friday had a countdown, a 3-2-1 ticking clock and so what if just maybe your hurt has one, too?
Heaven holds the truest of joys and the fullest redemption but what if your broken spaces in the daily moments have a countdown of their own?
What is He’s whispering four more days, months, years, my love… four more and there it will be. Hold on, I’m here just hold onto me. You can make it. I hear the cry and the countdown is on. Don’t give up in the Saturday. Just a little bit further, I have more to show you and love you through.
He loved you in the Friday of yesterday, He holds you in the emptiness of Saturday, and He is coming for you on Sunday.
Wait for tomorrow.
“Oh my God, He will not delay, my refugee and strength always. I will not fear, His promise is true. My God will come through always.” Kristian Stanfill, “Always”
Related: When Friday Isn’t “Good”
Related: Living In A Season of Saturday
Related: Sunday Is Coming
