Day Forty

Day Forty // April 11 // Abandoned to Hope (Holy Saturday)

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” – G.K. Chesterton –

The sun would rise. And the sun would set: the last pink ribbon of dusk conceding to the inky dark of night. And they waited. They waited in their grief. They waited in their shock. They waited in the numb of their emptiness and pain and disbelief. Was it all over? Was it all gone?

They waited. And they remembered. They remembered the lakeside where He’d taught and laughed and healed. They remembered the storms He’d calmed and the crowds He’d fed. They remembered His gentleness and His power, His wisdom and His words.

And they remembered the cross: the cruelty and the pain. They remembered the crown and the nails and the spear – how blood and water came mingled down. They remembered the quake, the darkness, the veil. They remembered it all – how He had loved and how they had run.

It was unbearable. It is unbearable: waiting. It is one of the hardest – and most God-like – experiences of our faith: enduring the times in between. Enduring the times in between joy, enduring the times in between peace, enduring the times in between knowing and doing and being. Enduring those times when we can only wait – fearing that what is good, important and needed is slipping away. Enduring those times when we are accompanied only by our memories of what once was and of all that could’ve been. All they could do was wait. And remember. And hope. Like the broken-winged bird that still looks to the heavens and sings, they hoped. They hoped that His words might still be true; they hoped that His promises might still be real – even from inside the grave. They hoped for one more miracle, for one more chance. They hoped for one more Hope. In the midst of all that was wasting and rotting within them, they clung to the hope that Life might still stir from death, to the hope that

Light might still be born from darkness. It had happened in the beginning; surely, it could happen again.

They waited and they hoped – trusting that God tarried just beyond their sight.

And so do we – abandoning all that would fetter us to the earth: all the fear, all the guilt, all the shame, all the brokenness, all the pain, and all the rot. We abandon all that would separate us from the One who died that we might live. We abandon them, waiting and hoping, for the life-changing, life-giving harvest of Christ.