Saturday Faith

I wasn’t prepared for how much my perspective of the days of the week would change when I retired. I used to have mild insomnia on Sunday nights because my mind was already getting into work mode. Likewise, I started to downshift come Friday, knowing the weekend was just within reach. Now, everything is different. Monday is a catch-up day around the house, laundry day, running to the grocery, etc. Days of the week have transformed, but nothing like the change in the weekend, especially Saturday. A friend who retired before me once told me, “When you retire, every day is Saturday.” I found elements of truth in this statement, but Saturday mentally is still special despite not working. Probably because Saturday and I had a love affair for so many years. It was between Sunday, a special day of its own, and Friday, which was partially guilty by association with work despite loving my job. Oh, but Saturday was and still is exceptional. It’s later breakfast, lollygagging with magazines, lingering outside with the dogs, hearing kids on bikes, and hearing lawnmowers. Or it’s heading out the door to rifle through the junk in antique stores or flea markets without the clock dictating a must and when. But coming off the passion season, with Easter Resurrection in full bloom, I meditated on the fact that Saturday was quite a different day in the lives of the disciples. I benefit from looking back through scriptural truth and reading the account of Easter through a different lens. My Saturday faith before Easter Sunday looks pretty much the same, but the challenge of Saturday faith to the followers of Christ that morning after the crucifixion was some dark test I have never had to take.

As I look back, one of my questions is, was there anyone? Anyone?? who had some fragment of hope that Christ would somehow, someway return to those He loved and who loved him? How about Jairus, who watched Jesus wake up his dead 12 yr old daughter? Or the Widow Nain who had already paid the undertaker and bought a casket that was holding her only son when Jesus stopped the funeral procession and raises him back to life? Did they even have any glimmer of what I refer to as Saturday faith? Where was Lazarus, and what was he thinking? Did he remember being dead, and did he ever get the smell of death out of his memory? It’s far easier for me because I have never experienced firsthand the physical dead Christ that the disciples witnessed. No pulse, cold and lifeless as Jesus’ head dropped on the cross after proclaiming, “It is Finished!” A precious dead body taken by Joseph of Arimathea bathed and anointed for burial without any sign of life. Saturday was a dark day. Of faithless fear that had crippled the disciples into denial and drove them to hiding places. Tears flowed, and sobs racked bodies with grief, but no one had any hope or thought that what we as believers now proclaim as our Easter slogan that “Sunday’s Coming!”

But then, bursting forth in Glorious bloom as the song relays, Up from the grave He arose! And Saturday hopelessness turned into Sunday joy and Elation. A resolve to make sense of His death was now renovated into rejoicing, and the promise of eternal restoration was on the day’s horizon. Fear turned to faith in the hearts and mouths of the disciples so much that they would all die proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ and His salvation, but not before they changed the world with the good news. I am reminded of that thought of “what a difference a day can make”. Though I can’t relate to this actual experience, I can relate to the waiting. Although on Saturday, no one really knew what they were waiting for. But I know! I know what they were waiting for then, and I have the blessed assurance of what I am waiting for now. I serve a risen Savior who will return for His people and me one day. Christ will not return as a teacher with a sermon to deliver on the mount, but will in all His glory and power return as the Conquering King where all the knees that bend to accommodate the faithless will bow before Him and Him alone. Where the tongues that have mocked His very existence and the people who hold to His absolute truth will speak only one confession as they meet justice, and that is, that Jesus alone is Lord of All.

But I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit holding onto what I call Saturday faith during the wait is still challenging. I still face dark doubts of despair that, if fostered, can weaken my faith. It can cause me to question if God will still intervene on my behalf. Days where I take the national news as truth rather than as skewed information, where the circumstances present as all is lost when God, Himself has promised it isn’t and won’t ever be because I belong to Him. Despite living in the post-resurrection era, does my testimony wreak of hopelessness and hand-wringing? Am I a good news girl living in a bad news world, or has the power that brought Jesus out of the tomb been so casually taken for granted that somehow I now believe there are a few things beyond its reach? Do I treat Easter like a one-and-done event? Or have I developed Saturday faith in the Living God who created every day and the week itself, knowing confidently there is no darkness, no hopeless situation that cannot be resurrected by Him?

Right now, given that we have faced a very challenging year, it does have a Friday cast to it. Many have lost loved ones, lost jobs, lost homes and prosperity, and many just have lost their hope and lost their way. The smell of death has been in the air. Right now, it’s a Saturday kind of existence. There is a sense of anticipation and despair at the same time. Will the virus be arrested, will the vaccine work, will “normal life” ever resume? What of the world and its lack of unity and in such a state of unrest? Is there hope?

My resounding testimony is Yes! He Lives! Christ Lives, and He will make the crooked way straight! He is the Eternal Hope and author and Finisher of my faith! Because Sunday came, Christ in His own power came out of the grave and conquered death in every form. It has made Saturday faith possible as we live between the symbolic bad Friday of the world and the glorious rapture of a symbolic Sunday where God will make all things new.

Lord, renew my faith. A faith that perseveres even when it seems all is lost. A faith that believes resurrection power was unleashed on that long-ago Easter morning and is still as potent and transforming as it was the moment the stone was rolled away and you came out of that grave. Let me live my life in the garden, not the cemetery. Let hope be in my heart and good news that encourages in my mouth. Lord, give me the conviction that you are at work even when I can’t see it. Jesus, I want Sunday morning hope in the Saturday world. Amen, Let it be so!