Living Through Life’s Saturdays: Trusting God in Uncertainty

Imagine, for just a moment, that you were one of Jesus’s followers who stood in the crowd as Roman soldiers hefted your Rabbi, pinned to a crude cross, into the darkening sky. The pounding hammers caused vibrations that shook his body as the wood thudded into the hole dug to keep its beams upright. The scarred horizon with its trees of torture displayed the accused criminals for all to see. You saw the agony, experienced the despair, and heard his words as with his last breath he cried, “It is finished!” You were there when the sun died midday and experienced the earth shake. It was a terrifying, shocking, staggering day mixed with fear, grief, and confusion.

You huddled close by as men removed Jesus’s broken body from the cross. You heard they had laid him in a tomb as the day slowly drained into night. Your future was now as uncertain as the emotions in your fraught mind. Just days before, such hope bubbled inside your soul as you listened to the teacher’s words, and now he was gone. Dead, murdered with some trumped-up charge against him, which you knew could not be true.

A fitful sleep overtook you in the early morning hours, and as dawn approached, you awoke with a pit of dread burning in your gut. The pictures of Friday replayed in your mind, and questions loomed large. Saturday stretched long and empty before you, as though all hope had died with Jesus. You did not yet know of Sunday’s triumph; all you had were his promises: “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up” (Matthew 17:22-23, NKJV) and “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27, NIV). Would these words be enough to calm your fears and questions about the unknown future? Would they carry you when all hope seemed gone?

In many ways, our life feels like the day in between. We live in a perpetual Saturday, where the uncertainty of the future can bring fear and anxiety. We cannot be sure what tomorrow will bring, but we have God’s words of promise that he is already there, making a way for us. We long to skip forward to the victory of resurrection Sunday, but God asks us to walk through the Saturdays of life, trusting him even when we don’t understand.

Are you going through your own Saturday struggle, where you have no idea what God is doing and what tomorrow will look like? Ask God to give you faith to hold onto his promises while you wait for Sunday to come, because Sunday is surely coming!