Yet I Will Hope

The tomb is sealed. The stone is rolled. The guards are posted. Saturday is the quietest, most unsettling day of the Christian year - the day when God appears to be absent, when hope looks like it has been buried right along with Jesus.

The writer of Lamentations understood this feeling deeply: "He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light." Holy Saturday is the day for those words. The day for sitting with grief that has not yet resolved into joy.

And yet - the very same writer finds something in the darkness: "Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning." New every morning. Tomorrow, the women will go to the tomb. The stone will not be where they left it. But that is tomorrow. Today, we wait - and whisper: yet I will hope.

Prayer: God of Saturday silences, meet us in the places where hope is hardest. Remind us that you are present even in sealed tombs. We hold onto the morning that is coming. Amen.