04/04/2026
On the waiting day, the in between day….
Today, we wait.
Being a follower of Jesus today is a little bit like watching a movie with a suspenseful ending that you’ve seen many times before, and yet every time you watch it, you wonder: will the right team win? Will good triumph over evil? Will the hero save the day?
As Christians on this in-between day, we know the answer to all these questions is an emphatic YES.
Yes, the right team will win. Yes, good will triumph over evil. Yes, the Hero will save the day.
And yet we wait in reverence, feeling as if we’re holding our breath, straining our eyes to see the dawn and our ears to hear the good news.
But it’s a hovering, expectant kind of on-hold. We know what we're waiting for. We know we're waiting to rejoice, "He is risen!" We know what we're hoping for, and we know those hopes will be realized.
Jesus' first followers, though, didn’t have this assurance on that in-between day when all hope seemed dead. They didn’t know they were waiting for anything. They thought they'd reached the end. "They still did not understand from the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead" (John 20:9). And it wasn’t just that they didn’t understand; they forgot the promise of Jesus' resurrection altogether. "'Why do you look for the living among the dead?'" two angels asked the women who had come to the tomb to tend a body they fully expected to find. "'He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you while he was still with you...'" It was only after this angelic inquiry that "then they remembered" (Luke 24:5-8).
I wonder why God didn’t cause Jesus' friends to understand. Why didn’t He move their minds to grasp the truth of what was coming on the third day? Why did He allow them to wait until "then" to remember?
I don’t presume to know the mind of the Lord, but maybe their example gives us hope on our own waiting Saturdays, on our own in-between days, when we don't know what we're waiting for or even if we're waiting for anything at all.
On that first Holy Saturday, the greatest day in human history was just on the other side of their waiting, but those early Christ-followers didn't know it. And neither do we know what kind of new life, victory, or indescribable joy lies just on the other side of our waiting.
But we can know this: God is working while we're waiting.
"In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly." (Psalm 5:3 NIV)
