It’s very easy to skip straight from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, and avoid the Saturday altogether. I think this is a missed opportunity, albeit a painful one to face. Imagine being one of the disciples. Your leader is dead. He has been buried in a tomb. The authorities are out to get you. You are hiding in the upper room, full of grief, fear and uncertainty.
Or you may identify more with the women. You may have witnessed the full horror of the crucifixion, seen the man you love and have followed faithfully breathe his last breath. You are at the tomb, in the throes of despair and pain, waiting… just waiting…
Waiting isn’t something we do very well in today’s world. Everything is designed for instant gratification, whether it be eating food, buying goods online that are delivered within twenty four hours, or streaming the next episode of our favourite television shows. In this fast-paced world it’s very difficult to be still, and just wait.
It is especially difficult when we don’t even know what we are waiting for. I believe that God always answers our prayers in one of three ways: yes, no, and not yet. It’s the not yet that leaves us reeling like a fish at the end of a line. We want to know. We feel like we need to know. I always say that I can handle anything so long as I understand it. But what if I don’t understand? What if everything looks bleak, and I am burdened with a heavy and endless silence.
Some Christian writers call this the “dark night of the soul.” It is the part of the Christian journey that is heaviest, darkest, full of the most doubt. Where we are not sure where God is in our lives. Where we can’t hear him. Where we begin to doubt that he is even there. Maybe God is dead after all, and all is lost.
But what these writers will also tell you is that the dark night nearly always precedes the coming of a wonderful dawn. Just as we will tomorrow celebrate Christ rising from the grave, so as we move through a time of waiting we can be reassured that God is not dead. He is very much alive. He does answer our prayers. He is on the move. We can have hope.
I am adopted. I was very lucky to be adopted by wonderful parents. But despite the great childhood and upbringing I had, there was always something missing deep down inside of me. I used to describe it as a hole in the heart.
When I was thirteen, I felt this most intensely. I went on a sailing holiday to the Isle of Wight. I sat on the dock, watching the sun set over the river and asked God to fill the hole in my heart, to help me find my birth mother. What I got back was a “not yet.”
It would have been easy for me to feel like God hadn’t answered me. Why wait? Surely he could answer that prayer now! But God’s timing is perfect. He knows when we are ready. He can see the big picture far better than any of us can.
Four years later, almost to the day, my Mum went on holiday to the same place on the Isle of Wight. She made friends with a lady who turned out to be my birth mother’s sister-in-law. Four years later, in that exact same place God said yes. He filled the hole in my heart and I was reunited with my birth mother. Any earlier would have been the wrong time. I just didn’t see it at the time.
Are you in the middle of a dark night? Are you in pain, feeling loss and despair? Are you hiding a part of yourself in fear? Are you keeping watch? Do you question where God is, and whether he is even listening? Don’t lose heart. He is there. He is listening. A new dawn is coming, and when it does, I promise you, it will be worth the waiting.
Olivia McCabe 