Saturdays

One Year Bible reading schedule for today…
Deuteronomy 16:1-17:20 | Luke 9:7-27 | Psalm 72:1-20 | Proverbs 12:8-9

Happy Easter precious friend!

Don’t you just love Easter? It’s a day filled with the excitement and hope of all that Jesus has done for us and all He is still yet to do. Like so many love to say on this special day,

“He is risen, He is risen indeed!”

In the last few days, I’ve just been pondering that first Easter weekend in my heart…

And I just keep wondering what that first Saturday was like. We celebrate Good Friday with a rejoicing heart, because we know that, though it’s a day that represents darkness, death, and desperation, it was actually a day of atonement, salvation, and victory. We read the sorrowful moments in the Gospels of those around the cross jeering and mocking the seeming inability of Jesus to save Himself, but we know Good Friday was the day Jesus chose not to save Himself so that we could instead be saved.

Easter Sunday is, of course, a glorious day because we’re reminded of all that this day represents… Jesus is alive! He has conquered death and the grave! Our sin is gone! We had no hope of salvation in and of ourselves, but our amazing LORD and Savior has taken our sin and shame upon Himself, and we have been redeemed!  

Friday became good as we look back and understand the way our lives have been changed eternally… Easter Sunday is, of course, the most glorious of days… But my heart just keeps wondering what those Saturday emotions would have been like… Saturday would have been their Sabbath, and I just can’t imagine how still and quiet it would have been. I think human tendency is to keep as busy as possible when our hearts are hurting or anxious. Can you imagine how hard it would have been to stay home and sit still after all you had seen and experienced on that dark Friday? It would have been a day of great introspection, wonder, sorrow, and heartbreak.

The disciples and followers of Jesus must have felt like they had lost everything. They had given up so much to follow after Jesus. They had left lives behind, jobs behind, people behind, places behind… and now He was gone and they had been left behind. Maybe on that Saturday all their sacrifices felt a little bit worthless, empty, void, futile, and silly.

All these thoughts were on my heart this morning as I read Luke 9 where Jesus said…

“If anyone wishes to be a follower of mine, he must leave self behind, day after day he must take up his cross, and come with me. Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake, that man is safe. What will a man gain by winning the whole world,
at the cost of his true self?”
Luke 9:23-26 (The New English Bible)

We read these verses on the other side of the cross. We’ve seen the whole picture of the Messiah dying for our sins, and we understand better now what Jesus was talking about. We know we follow Him to our crosses.  He doesn’t just push us to some cross that we take up while He sits comfortably on a throne somewhere. We also know that compared to the literal cross Jesus took up for us, our small sacrificial “crosses” that we take up daily can’t even begin to compare with all we receive in the exchange.

But I wonder what His disciples thought about the call to take up a cross, having no idea that the Messiah was about to take up a literal cross for them. In my time of reading Luke over the last few days, there have been so many cross-roads moments that stood out to me, times where Jesus allowed there to be pain in order to bring life, allowed there to be brokenness in order to bring wholeness. I’ve been noticing all the moments where Jesus places His hands into the void to create and sustain life, hope, provision, and promise.

We read this week about Jairus coming to Jesus, pleading for the life of his twelve-year-old daughter. While Jesus was on His way, He lets Himself be stopped by a woman who deeply needed a public acknowledgement of her healing and her faith. This precious girl’s life kind of wrecks my heart, if I’m honest! Can you imagine how hard life had been for her?  She had wrestled with this illness for twelve long years. And it wasn’t just a physical health problem. Her issue of bleeding would have made her unclean… for twelve years she was cast out, unwanted, unwelcomed, isolated. Talk about the baggage of rejection! She had spent all she had trying to get rid of this plague upon her life, but to no avail. She was desperate, and she knew if she could just grab a hold of the hem of the garment of Jesus, she could be made whole once more. In an instant her life is changed by the healing love of Jesus. Twelve long years were transformed in a moment by the touch of the Resurrection and the Life upon her.

Twelve years of “Saturdays”… Waiting. Watching. Wondering. And then one day her “Sunday” finally came.

It was in that moment, though, that someone runs up to Jairus and gives him the report that his situation is now hopeless…

“Your daughter is dead; trouble the Rabbi no further.”
Luke 8:49 (The New English Bible) 

The household of Jairus was immediately thrown into a “Saturday,” but Saturdays will never be Saturdays for long with Jesus around. After encouraging the faith of Jairus, and wading through the mockers, Jesus takes the hand of the “sleeping” daughter and speaks life back into her.

Jesus is the resurrection and the life, but before the “Sunday” comes He will often let us sit through the “Saturday,” teaching us to wait on Him, trust in Him, believe in Him, and seek Him.

There was also a moment this week in the reading where Jesus and the disciples were surrounded by a hungry multitude. They were hungry for the words Jesus was speaking into their lives, but they had been with Him in the wilderness for days and they were physically hungry as well. Our compassionate Jesus asks His disciples to feed the multitudes, which only pointed out a hopeless lack to these servants of God. They immediately start pointing out all the problems with what Jesus was asking them to do.

There wasn’t enough money… enough time… enough strength… enough provision. Jesus knew how He was going to feed all these precious people, but He let the disciples feel a “Saturday” before He provided the “Sunday.” Jesus let the disciples feel the lack, feel their own emptiness, see their great inadequacy and need before He placed the provision of the bread and fish within their hands.

The multitude was also feeling a “Saturday” in this moment as well, weren’t they? They had been hungry for days yet kept following Him to hear His words of life. They had no idea that Jesus was about to provide abundantly for their physical needs, and before He filled them up to the brim with food, He allowed them to sit with their hunger.

And it’s after all this takes place- all this provision; all this healing; all this abundance, that Jesus calls out to His disciples and the multitudes to take up their crosses and follow after Him. He let them see the need, the hunger, the death, the desire, and then He showed them that regardless of what they had to pick up, take up, endure, or walk through, that He would always be the answer. He let them know that after a “Saturday” He would always be the “Sunday.”

And isn’t this the whole beautiful point of Easter Sunday? There is death, but He brings life. There is hunger, but He will fill and satisfy. There is pain, but He will heal. There is hopelessness, but He is our hope. Without Jesus we are unbelievably lost, dead, isolated, hopeless, and alone. As we walk with Jesus there will be difficult days where we experience death, despair, hunger, pain, and loss. With Jesus there will be moments where He calls us to take up our cross and follow after Him. But we can have hope in the truth that we are never called to a “Saturday” without the promise of the glorious “Sunday” waiting just around the corner.