Craving//Connecting: Saturday

When the tomb feels forever sealed

While studying the life and ministry of Jesus, countless themes emerge—faith, hope, and love, to name a few. One that wasn’t as apparent to me until recently, though, is the theme of timing. A theme that, if I’m honest, makes me bristle.

I’m willing to bet that someone has told you it’s all in God’s timing in response to a challenge you’ve walked through. Whether you’re waiting on a job, a baby, healing, restoration, a move, or any number of circumstances that require patience, people love to throw out this phrase like a blanket on a fire—an attempt to snuff out any pain or discomfort without getting too close. While most people mean well, these words have become a meaningless platitude and ones most of us have written off. Myself included.

Until I studied the book of John and couldn’t ignore the power of timing in Jesus’s ministry, especially as it relates to the Easter story. While I still don’t endorse banalities in response to life’s challenges, the deeper I dive into Jesus’s life, the more I’ve learned to trust the Lord’s timing in my own life.

Throughout Jesus’s time on earth, He repeatedly spoke of His time or His hour.

“Jesus told them, ‘My time has not yet arrived, but your time is always at hand. The world cannot hate you, but it does hate me because I testify about it—that it’s works are evil. Go up to the festival yourselves. I’m not going to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.’”—John 7:6-8 ESV

“Then they tried to seize him. Yet no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come.”—John 7:30 (ESV)

“Jesus replied to them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’—John 12:23 (ESV)

“‘Now my soul is troubled. What should I say—Father, save me from this hour? But that is why I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’”—John 12:27-28 (ESV)

“Now when it was time for supper, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, to betray him. Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands, that he had come from God, and that he was going back to God.—John 13:2-3 (ESV)

“Father, the hour has come come. Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him.”—John 17:1-2 (ESV)

Up until the time He was arrested, no one could lay a hand on Jesus because His time had not yet come. We see numerous examples of Jesus retreating or escaping harm not because He was afraid, but because He knew it was not the right time. And when His time did come, He willingly laid down His life (John 19:30). He didn’t worry God had forgotten Him. Jesus knew and trusted His Father to orchestrate these events when and how they should take place. His followers, on the other hand, were not as understanding. Jesus wasn’t surprised by the timing or events surrounding His death, but those who loved Him were.

Despite Old Testament prophecy and Jesus Himself predicting His death and resurrection, those who loved and followed Him were still stunned and saddened when He died. His accusers, on the other hand, rejoiced. On Friday, with the death of Jesus, it seemed as though evil had won and darkness had conquered the light.

“It was about noon, and the darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.”—Luke 23:44-45 (NIV)

Then Saturday came and….silence. After an action-packed week culminating in Jesus’s death, Saturday held nothing but stillness and mourning. The story had apparently ended and evil had prevailed once and for all.

For the past few years have felt as though I’m living Saturday in perpetuity. Whether it’s a miscarriage, cancelled fertility treatments, having our foster son leave, an abrupt move, walking through a devastating diagnosis of a dear friend’s parent, experiencing failed embryo transfers, and even now with my nephew’s leukemia diagnosis, I have grown to relate more with the Saturday of Easter weekend than Sunday. The silence in response to the prayers I’ve prayed is often times deafening. Time and again, it feels as though the darkness has swallowed the light.

But these heartbreaks, always occurring right around Easter, have served as another reminder of the Lord’s providential timing. Without experiencing the weight and heaviness on the Saturday after Jesus died, Sunday would not have been as glorious and joyful. The Lord knew humanity would need to sit in the grief and sadness to feel their impact. He knew we would not experience the fullness of the resurrection without sitting with the emptiness of death.

The same is true for me—these losses help me to not only understand Saturday, but they help me to more fully appreciate Sunday. Without the Saturdays of my life, I would likely take the Sundays for granted. I would assume they were a given rather than viewing them as a gift.

Unlike the Easter story, in so many areas of my life, Sunday hasn’t come just yet. There are many loose ends still dangling about, waiting to be tied up nicely in a bow. I’m still waiting for my stone to be rolled away. And to be honest, I don’t know if it will. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you’re still waiting on your miracle, not knowing whether or not it will come.

But neither did Mary Magdalene that Sunday morning when she approached Jesus’s tomb. She was not expecting to see the stone of the tomb rolled away, she only wanted to be as close to Jesus as possible. I want the same. I know He is the only one with the power to roll my stones away, but even if He doesn’t, His presence is the most comforting place I can find myself.

I love His interaction with Mary Magdalene in John 20:17-18:

“‘Don’t cling to me’, Jesus told her, ‘since I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them what he had said to her. (ESV)

While it’s tempting to cling to Jesus during times of uncertainty and keep quiet until I know the way it all will end, He instructs me to go and tell the ways I have witnessed Him working in my life. This doesn’t mean I can’t be near to Him, but simply that I am not to wait until my life is perfect before I share all the ways I have witnessed Him work. Even if He never does anything else for me in my life, He has already lavished more grace and mercy and kindness on me than I ever deserved. He has already rolled the biggest stone away—the one separating me from Him. I don’t know how my story will end, but I do know how the Easter story ends so like Mary, I can go and tell.