Thanks Maggi Dawn for the following … Some how I needed to hear this.
“Today is the day after; the day we remember the dark, unfathomable depth of despair the disciples must have faced at the unbelievable loss of not only their friend and mentor, but the person who embodied all their hopes of spiritual and political redemption. How had this happened? They hadn’t seen it coming, although now they are beginning to remember little signs that maybe he HAD. Odd things he’d said now and then. Some of his strange sayings that hadn’t made sense at the time. Maybe he knew he was on the edge. But before now, he’d always managed to slip away, to evade the crowds, to diminish the publicity, to move on to the next town when things got awkward and edgy.
There have been several recent news events that ring, for me, with the truth of Holy Saturday. Like the Tsunami, the disciples’ week in Jerusalem, was for many people a holiday of a lifetime that turned into a nightmare. How the disciples must have wished they’d just stayed home and had a picnic on Lake Galilee. And the loss of remarkable and inspiring spiritual leaders – such as Colin Gunton and Stan Grenz – when they suddenly leave early, leave the rest of us shocked and a bit paralysed, not quite knowing how to react, not knowing how their shoes will ever be filled.
Sometimes I think knowing the end of the story ruins us for entering into the sense of what Holy Saturday was all about. Holy Saturday, for the disciples, wasn’t a brief pause to do a spot of shopping before the celebrations begin on Easter Sunday. It was a shell-shocked, dark chasm that opened up and swallowed them. It was the end of all their hopes and dreams; the loss of thier friend and leader, and with it the slipping away of their daily lives and routines. They were utterly, completely lost and shattered. This was the end of absolutely everything.”