Holy Saturday: Still Waiting

Holy Saturday: Still Waiting

Holy Saturday — the day between Good Friday and Easter — was historically called 'the Great Silence.' The disciples did not know it was only one day. They thought the silence was permanent. They had seen Jesus die. The tomb was sealed. The movement was over. Everything they had hoped for had been crushed in one afternoon. They sat in the silence not knowing that Sunday was coming. We often live in Holy Saturday seasons — between the death of something we believed in and the resurrection we haven't yet seen. We know Sunday is coming because we have the completed story. But knowing intellectually and experiencing emotionally are different. The disciples teach us something: they stayed. They waited. In the silence, they remained.

Habakkuk's song of desolation — 'though the fig tree does not bud' — is remarkable because it comes in the context of his having received God's word about coming judgment and eventual deliverance. He knows what is coming. But the experience of the present is barrenness: no figs, no grapes, no olives, no harvest. And yet he will rejoice. The 'yet' of verse 18 is one of the great spiritual pivots in all of Scripture. Not because circumstances have changed, not because the evidence has improved, but because of who God is: 'God my Savior.' Holy Saturday faith is the faith that can say 'yet I will rejoice' before the resurrection arrives. It is faith in God's character, not in visible evidence. The tomb is still sealed. The stone is still in place. And yet.