The day after Good Friday and before Easter — the already but not yet . I think Holy Saturday is a great opportunity to reflect on our lives today and the tension we live in daily. Christ has been crucified, and Christ lies in the tomb today. Tomorrow we know that resurrection is coming and the miracle of redemption is real, but today we wait.
We wait for a day when tears will dry, pain will be a distant memory, and shame has been destroyed. I cannot wait for the day when Jesus Christ returns once and for all and calls all his children home. The world is full of such terrible suffering and despair. I have had friends die from all sorts of ailments from addiction to suicide to disease and virus. I recently realized in light of the current pandemic we are experiencing globally that the world is in a state of constant chaos and nothing is ever sure.
We wait for a day when tears will dry, pain will be a distant memory, and shame has been destroyed. I cannot wait for the day when Jesus Christ returns once and for all and calls all his children home. The world is full of such terrible suffering and despair. I have had friends die from all sorts of ailments, from addiction to suicide to disease and virus. The current global pandemic had made me realize that the world is in a state of constant chaos and nothing is ever sure.
Who else would want to continue dealing with our sinful fallout? Who would have the patience to pursue and secure our hopeful future in the midst of a fallen world ? — Only an omnibenevolent being; only a God of grace a God of love, Jesus Christ. The thing that separates Christianity from all other religions is that we have a God that bleeds. Our God died a bloody death because we were really that bad and desperately needed a Savior. We were not going to figure things out, or create a utopia to deal with our mess. We were all going to die, UNLESS we had a good Father looking after us and sustaining us in the storm. Our God bled, and he died, and he rose again and he is coming one last time to finish what He started.
We are living in the already and not yet: the Holy Saturday . As of this point in history, Jesus has risen again and given us His Holy Ghost to live and sanctify us in the midst of constant and total depravity. At a certain day in the future, we will be perfected when sin is no more. In the meantime, our God is extremely patient, full of grace, while he waits to save his sheep from sure death.
Hard Faith is a admonition to keep the good fight and to maintain hope in the midst of Holy Saturday. There is so much damn hurting going on right now in the world, and one day everything wrong that has ever happened will be atoned for… but until then we are called and given the gift of perseverance. Hard Faith is the calling of saints, both crawling and unsteady, to give life another day and to wait and see and taste that our Lord is good and that He will save all of us. The tomb cannot hold Him. He will rise, and so will we. Give us grace to live another day and be worthy of our great calling. Amen.
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