This week I was overwhelmed with the tragic story of the almost 300 teens from South Korea that drowned in a horrible ferry boat accident. Within this tragedy was other tragedies: students being told to stay below deck as the boat sank, the last text messages that the students sent their parents as they died. This story struck a chord deeply in me and I wept over it as I have never done over a tragedy far away from me.
This same week a colleague's house burned to the ground and she lost everything--including the family pets. Also, another friend continues to walk in grief with the loss of her sister and two little nieces in a fire. You could certainly add losses and tragedy to this paragraph.
Tragedy and terrible loss has always been part of the human experience. Yet it continues to surprise us, devastate us, and make us question the goodness and power of God.
Holy Saturday marks for us the way that most of us live most of the time. For most of us, the crisis of extreme suffering (Good Friday in our lives) passes, but is not our daily reality. For most of us, we have moments and days of Easter Sunday joy, but it is not a constant way of life. Instead, most of us live in Holy Saturday. Waiting with grief and loss and broken relationships, disappointments and deep hurt--hoping and daring to believe that Sunday will come, but living in Saturday.
I know as Christians we are urged to live in the joy of resurrection. Truly this is our hope and inspiration. We have seasons, days or hours of this kind of joy. But I find most of us live in Saturday. We are caught in the cross of hope and grief that makes up the human experience.
The best thing is: Jesus is here in Saturday. Saturday is where Jesus does his work of waiting in the dark with us. Of championing over hell and death and suffering. Of tasting death and overcoming it.
This week I have been praying about the tragedy of the South Korean teens and asking God to take my prayers and compassion into that boat. God is outside of time, so God can carry my compassion today into the past of death and suffering. I ask for the God of Life: the God of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday to be exquisitely present in the final moments of the students' lives. Asking God to whisper Love and Truth and Beauty and Peace into their hearts and minds. Asking God to ease their passage from this life to the next with the gentleness of a mother.
What are you sitting with this Holy Saturday? What's the intersection of hope and grief in your life for yourself or someone else?
Soul, this is place where you start. Life is about living in the Wait between Friday and Easter.
Not closing our eyes and hearts to the reality of the suffering world and suffering Christ of Friday.
Not forgetting the hope and joy and promise of Easter.
We take up residence in Saturday and wait with the rest of the world, breathing in Sunday and breathing out Friday.
The Christian life is about learning to breathe.
The practice today: Take some space to sit and breathe. Take note of the breath in your lungs, the in and out of breath. As you breathe, find a breath prayer to match with your breathing.
Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.
Or
I am the Beloved God.
Live into the breath as you wait in the Holy Saturday of life.
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