In Louisiana, a woman lies buried beneath a grove of 150-year-old oak trees in the cemetery of an Episcopal church. Only one word is carved on her tombstone: “Waiting.”
A friend of mine knows an elderly pastor who delivered a stirring Good Friday sermon titled “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Comin’.” In a cadence that increases in tempo and volume, his sermon contrasts how the world looked on Friday—when the forces of evil seemed to have triumphed—with how it looked on Sunday. The disciples who lived through both days never doubted God again. They learned that when God seems most absent, He may be closest of all.
The sermon skips one day, though—Saturday—the day with no name. What the disciples lived through in small scale, we now live through on cosmic scale. It’s Saturday on planet earth; will Sunday ever come?
That dark, Golgothan Friday can only be called good because of what happened on Sunday. Easter opened up a crack in a universe winding down toward decay. And someday God will enlarge the miracle of Easter to cosmic scale.
Meanwhile, we wait in hopeful anticipation, living out our days on Saturday, the in-between day with no name.
It’s Saturday. But Sunday’s comin’. — Philip Yancey
Dark was the night—sin warred against us!
Heavy the load of sorrow we bore;
But now we see signs of His coming—
Our hearts glow within us, joy’s cup runneth o’er! —Camp
© Renewal 1941 Norman Camp.
God took the worst deed of history and turned it into the greatest victory.