Lamentations 3:19-24
Holy Saturday.
A pause.
A space between Good Friday and Easter.
A full tomb and, except for the guard, an empty garden.
Still. Silent.
We don’t often linger on Holy Saturday, treating it instead as a day of preparation for Easter Sunday. I’ve spent it at church rehearsing for services and checking that the Easter flowers haven’t wilted. At home, especially when my kids were little, I filled Easter baskets and laid out their clothes for the morning. Now, I help prepare our house for Easter dinner with family. Holy Saturday is easily consumed by readiness for what comes next.
We live, of course, after the first Easter. We know how the story ends and cannot pretend otherwise. And yet Holy Saturday remains—a single, holy day set apart for waiting. It is a day to grieve, to embrace emptiness, and to face the truth that life, as we know, it is over.
Lamentations 3:24 (NIV)—“The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him”—speaks powerfully into this day of waiting. It names a hope rooted not in outcomes or possessions, but in God’s faithfulness itself. In the quiet darkness between death and resurrection, we are reminded that God’s mercies, not worldly assurances, are what sustain us.
The day between Good Friday and Easter confronts us with a silence we would rather avoid. Like silence itself, it unsettles us; we rush to fill it with noise and motion, as though activity could reassure us that we still exist. And yet the space between crucifixion and resurrection, frightening and tender at once, calls us beyond ourselves and into the life of Christ. Elijah learned this long ago: God was not in the spectacle, but in the sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19:11–13).
When we shed our lives and enter the tomb, when silence closes in around us, we discover that Jesus is already there, waiting ahead of us. He welcomes us into stillness, into death with him, so that we might also find our life in him.
Listen: He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word
Question for Reflection:
- Will you make space for silence today, allowing your heart to prepare for the joy that is coming at Easter?
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, may the stillness of this Holy Saturday calm my soul. Thank you for the cross, and for the resurrection that is to come. I entrust my life to You. Amen
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