The long day's journey of Saturday

Every year on the Saturday before Easter, I remember a sentence I read in a Philip Yancey book when I was in college. Yancey quoted a man who described the Christian experience as "the long day's journey of Saturday," referring to that strange day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Yancey elaborates, writing, "For some, like Betsy [a women with Alzheimer's], Saturday's long day's journey seems too long, its burdens too heavy. The fact of Good Friday may offer some solace of companionship [in the sense that Jesus understands the cruelty of this world and suffers with us]. And yet for one trapped in suffering and shame and a mind too clouded to understand anything else, the promise of Sunday seems hazy and hopelessly insubstantial. Unless, of course, it's true."

It seems that in this last year, more than most, Adam and I find ourselves seeing and feeling more of the suffering and tragedy of living in a fallen world. We can hardly walk down the block without being confronted with some reminder that sin and its destructive effects touch of every part of human existence--whether it's the homeless man mumbling to himself while he walks to the liquor store, the sounds of an ambulance siren rushing to the scene of some disaster, or the selfish and frighteningly violent anger that arises so easily within our own hearts. In the face of seemingly unending tragedy, the promise of a resurrection that will make everything okay can at times seem "hazy and hopelessly insubstantial" as Yancey puts it. Unless, of course, it's true.

Yes, "ours is the long day's journey of Saturday." Oh God, give us strength to believe and to dare to hope that he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead can also give life to our mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in us. (Romans 8:11)