"Poor Holy Saturday,
hung out to dry between
Good Friday's drama 
and Easter's miracle.
Not much going for it,
this day bereft of tradition,
just an in between time.
A day of waiting around,
a day of thinking we knew.

Welcome home.
This is the day we live most of our life in,
the wide space between tragedy and recovery,
the emptiness between the pain and the healing.

We don't always know we're waiting
for something not in our hands,
that has already happened,
unknowingly included in a procession
toward someone who's already here.
Only later, not on this day, do we know
we're not waiting for a future;
we're watching God unfold.

That is enough.
That is way this day,
drab and ordinary,
is Holy.
 ~ Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Holy Saturday
 

This reflection on Holy Saturday was given to me some years ago by a Spiritual Director and I revisit it every year on Holy Saturday. This year, these words have taken on a deep poignancy. It feels like a description for this time.

This year, it feels like Holy Saturday is where we are being asked to linger for a time. Living in the "wide space between tragedy and recovery, the emptiness between the pain and the healing." We are waiting for something not in our hands. We are living in the already but not yet of Easter. But if we watch for it, we will see God unfold.

The feeling of waiting, the tragedy and pain of this moment does not take away from what God is doing and has already done. Easter is coming. The stone will be rolled away. We will with Jesus rise. We will walk together, break bread with our friends, enjoy a fish fry on the beach, and dance in the light of resurrection. Easter is coming.

None of this waiting takes away from what God is doing. Together, as God's people in our isolation, we are participating in a very real way in what God is doing and has already done in Easter, namely, conquering death.

May you witness God's unfolding this Easter season and always,
Deb

Rev. Deb Stanbury 
Community Chaplain & Executive Director