That's what I call today--this day sandwiched in between heart-wrenching horror and disappointment and the glorious surprise of death's head being ground into the dirt and Someone beloved, appearing again, more alive than ever. The day when the disciples were likely in suspense without even knowing there was something to be suspended for.
On this day, I feel, all waiting converges. The waiting of Advent, for Jesus' first and now second coming. The waiting of Lent for the dawning of Easter. But also the waiting for other hopes and dreams and seeing how things will turn out. Once I said all life is kind of like Lent. But maybe really it's all like Waiting-Saturday. I know the reality of the brokenness of the world. (And other people know it far better than I do.) But Something has happened, and even though mostly life is going on looking broken, I can't shake the feeling that there's a What's Next, and it's going to be big.
Anyway, Waiting-Saturday has become kind of an important day for me, at least in my head. This year I observed it by getting up early before work and heading down to the church. Two young guys, one still in high school and the other just recently graduated from it, had decided to organise a prayer vigil at our church, spanning from the end of our Good Friday service last night, to the first of our two Easter services on Sunday morning. I thought this was a great idea, and it was nice to go when no one else was around.
Possibly, it would be an equally good idea to have this sort of prayer going on there all the time, and for me to participate in it before work, because even though it was a crazy-as-usual Saturday at Starbucks, I had an apparently endless supply of energy and good-will, nobody got on my nerves, coffee was purveyed, and I left at the end of my shift in a good mood. By which I mean, I kind of had fun.
2 comments:
"Waiting-Saturday".
that's nice. i like it.
and good thoughts on the tearing apart that comes after such horror. i somewhat wonder if the day in between the death and resurrection wasn't partially for his followers' period of grief - so that they can grieve and truly see Christ as having actually died.
Jasdye--that's good thinking. The resurrection would have come as such a jolt anyway, that no allowance for grief first might have led to some sort of insanity. Not to mention that the disciples themselves (and not just swoon-theorists, etc) might have doubted whether Jesus had, in fact, died.
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