The Sacred In-between
How are you doing with the tension of waiting during COVID-19?
Yesterday, the Christian Church honored the death of Jesus Christ on a cross over 2,000 years ago, and tomorrow, believers everywhere will celebrate Easter: Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. But little attention is given to the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
What do we do in the in-between time? How do we handle waiting between the tragedy and the restoration? Between the promise and the fulfillment?
It is uncomfortable in our culture to be “unfinished.”
Often in our conversations, pain is quickly interpreted, minimized, or dismissed, even in the Church. Christian conversations run to faith, hope, or trust, while sometimes, the heart-level issues and process can be overlooked. But God doesn’t do that. And His scriptures don’t either.
God ordained days between Jesus’s death and when humanity realizes the good news. This time, known as Holy Saturday in the Catholic Church, ought to be embraced as a time to recognize the tensions in God’s work and purpose in His-Story, and the tensions in our own stories.
We can move from painful tension to a restful posture, ready to receive God’s good news.
The Psalms, often called the prayer book of Israel, taught them to bring their laments to God. What is a lament?
A lament is considered one of the highest forms of worshipping God (worship is a sacrifice of honor, symbolizing how God is worthy of our focus, time, energy, resources, etc).
In lament we recognize God’s promise and character, and tell Him in prayerful conversation what in our circumstance isn’t working yet, what is broken, or what is taking way too long. We bring before Him the realities of our circumstances with the knowledge of who we know God to be and cry out for Him to reconcile the tension.
A common lament prayer in Psalms is “How long, O Lord?” This may very well be the cry of your heart during this season of shelter-in-place.
Today, Holy Saturday, is the threshold of Christian lament. We know what’s coming biblically. But today is about accounting what hasn’t come yet personally, and bringing that to God in prayer. What in your story needs to be brought to God in lament? Lament actually leads us deeper into relationship with God.
But how?
As I reread the crucifixion account in Luke chapter 23, one powerful phrase stood out. After Jesus dies, and they prepare his body for burial, the Jewish people were beginning a weekly Holy day commanded by God called Sabbath. Sabbath was their time to REST:
“Then they took [Jesus’s] body down and wrapped it in linen and laid Him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever been laid. It was the beginning of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. ”
Sabbath had been commanded by God almost two thousand years before this moment. During Sabbath, you do not work, you REST. No matter what. Just as God rested on the last day of creation, saying “Very good,” so we rest in His finished work, even when it’s still unfinished in our experience.
As these dedicated disciples of Jesus honored Jesus’s death, they quickly had to prepare for the Sabbath and, after the burial, they hustled to their homes in honor of God’s law. The last verse before Jesus resurrection reads:
“On Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.”
Are you beginning to glimpse God’s genius? At the worst moment for Israel’s hope, at the dashed dreams of the disciples, at the threshold of Holy Saturday, the very last verse before Jesus breaths again is God’s command to REST.
This shot off like fireworks in my mind, especially during shelter-in-place. We have huge laments: parts of our lives that don’t yet make sense with who we know God to be. This tension is the beginning of a powerful and personal prayer. But lament actually does something significant inside our souls.
Lament can bring us to REST.
Many of us know God’s promises (if you don’t, take a look, there are thousands of amazing promises God gifts to His children, many have already been fulfilled, others for which we still wait). And many of us know His glorious ending: God wins. But how many of us know the art of resting in the tensions with the scriptures?
As we offer this lament as worship, it’s at that threshold that we can finally find the REST our souls need through authentic connection with God. This connection actually prepares us for the joy to come.
As we practice lament, it makes space for our souls to receive in the middle of unfinished circumstances. These “Sabbath preparations” are an act of faith. Holy Saturday integrates lament with rest.
As we bring our lament to God in worship, our soul anticipates what He’ll do next. In lament we recognize our lack of control, in Sabbath we recognize God’s ultimate control, and this connection with God relieves us enough of our control to receive the coming good news.
Spend some time considering:
What is one area of tension, or lament, that I need to bring to God in prayerful conversation?
How have I seen God already working in that area? What still isn’t working, what is the tension between?
Tell God about what it is like as you sit in that tension. What is coming up in your mind? Be honest with Him.
Keep your focus on Him, remember who He is as God, ask, “God, how can we stay connected as I wait for good news?”
“So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. ”
