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Waiting


Yesterday was Good Friday.  Tomorrow is Easter.  Today... we wait.  Most years, I think Holy Saturday feels a little awkward.  You aren't quite sure what to do with yourself.  It's hard to be as solemn as Good Friday.  But you can't celebrate either, not yet.  So you wait.

But this year, Holy Saturday seems to have an added layer of meaning.  Because that is exactly what we are all doing: just waiting.  Waiting to get out of the house again and go someplace, to see friends and family, to return to work.  Hoping that the current moment,  the awkward in-between moment of waiting, will end.

Yesterday evening I hit the halfway point in my reading through the Psalms, which some of you are doing along with me in the Psalms Challenge.  This morning I started with Psalm 77, which turned out to be a very meaningful psalm for Holy Saturday.  The psalmist begins with a cry to God for help:

          I cry aloud to God,
          aloud to God, that he may hear me.
          In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord....

He misses God's presence and feels abandoned:

          Has his steadfast love for ever ceased?
          Are his promises at an end for all time?
          Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Yet he remembers God's faithfulness in the past as he led his people on the Exodus from Egypt:

          Thy way was through the sea,
          thy path through the great waters;
          yet thy footprints were unseen.

Today God's footprints are unseen, and we wait for him to lead his people forth again.
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