“From noon to three, the whole earth was dark. Around mid-afternoon Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, “ Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? ” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Some bystanders who heard him said, “He’s calling for Elijah.” One of them ran and got a sponge soaked in sour wine and lifted it on a stick so he could drink. The others joked, “Don’t be in such a hurry. Let’s see if Elijah comes and saves him.”
But Jesus, again crying out loudly, breathed his last.”
Matthew 27:45-50
It steals the breath from my lungs to imagine Friday. To imagine Him hanging there. My Hope, my Rescue. The One who had promised He was The One! He had promised! Now He was lifeless. Cold. Gone. To imagine them lowering His bruised and blood-soaked body to the ground, wrapping His remains in clean linen and placing it into a stone-sealed grave.
To imagine the day after: Saturday. To wake up to darkness and silence, and remember. It was not a bad dream. He is gone. And it was my sin that stopped his heart and halted his breaths.
It has always ached me to envision this moment in time. Always.
But this year is different.
This year, there is a grave here that holds a piece of me, and it is not empty. It holds the ashes of a body that I needed to be here. Arms that hugged me while I weeped, hands that held mine when I didn’t feel brave enough. There is a grave here that has not been emptied after 3 days. And with that, Saturday seems clearer to me. Not because I could possibly fathom what it was like to see the Light of the World torn to shreds and thrown into a tomb, but because I can feel the silence of Saturday. I can feel the waiting.
I know what has happened. And I know what is going to happen. But the rest of my life will be lived out in the middle of those two things, the promise made and the promise fulfilled. The rest of my life will be lived in this Saturday.
It sounds like a terribly-awful-no-good story, does it not? It certainly would be if it ended here; if it ended on Saturday. But it didn’t.
And so we ache and the earth moans. So many hearts are breaking and so many graves are not yet empty.
But we wait. Joyfully, hopefully, patiently.
Sunday’s coming.
Grace In Between 