I heard a really good talk last week, it had been the first time in a while that I had gone to church. I don’t go to church very often these days, I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere, I don’t belong. So I avoid it, not from lack of invitation but motivation. But I had an hour to kill in London so I wandered in, the speaker, a man called Ken Costa began to talk, he spoke about justice and how the small minority can stand against the tide and change the course of history. He spoke about William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. I liked it, needless to say. Then he began to speak about something that completely captured me; he called it ‘Silent Saturday’, the day after Jesus has been crucified. When you grow up in church you hear about Easter all the time, Jesus died and then He rose again and that is our Easter story. Along with chocolate and Easter eggs. But I have never heard anybody talk about the Saturday in between, the Saturday when the whole world goes dark, when the story seems finished, the disciples scattered, their hopes dashed, when they are grief stricken and broken. He talked about how actually for a lot of the time we live in the Silent Saturday, when all hope seems lost, when joy is absent and the world seems beyond redemption. When no one even knows that Sunday is coming.
Later that week, with this talk still floating around in my head, I went to see my GP, I thought she might be able to help me with the exhaustion I feel at the moment. Instead she talked to me about grief, she talked about how when someone dies and the funeral is over, other people go back to their lives, life continues, it has to. But for the people who have lost the person they love, their whole world has changed, nothing will ever be the same again, their reality has been altered forever. They now live in Silent Saturday, days are dark, grief is a constant, joy is lost. I thought about the girl at the centre of the Belfast rape trial, about how soon the marches will stop, the media will move on, but she will remain. Living in her own Silent Saturday. We all live through and in our own Silent Saturdays. And not for the first time or the last time I wondered where God is, in this broken and lost world. Where was God at the rape trial, where was justice? Where is God in Sub Saharan Africa while children starve, where is He in the Syrian War, where is He in the brothels of South East Asia or South East Ireland for that matter? Where is He while I cry over all that I have lost.
The thing with Silent Saturdays is that we so rarely speak about them, just like the Easter story, we can be tempted to skip past it, but Saturday happened. It had to, for the Easter story to mean anything, for Friday’s death to mean anything and Sunday’s resurrection to be the beginning of all things new, there had to be the day in between. The day when everything is dark, right before the dawn.
And a lot of the time this is where we live, in the day in between. It is where I live right now, I know an easier day will come, I know that one day I will laugh again and actually feel it in my soul, that the tears which so freely flow right now will not freely flow forever. Sunday is coming. I know that, deep within me. And it is with this deep rooted belief, that so often seems too far to reach, that I look again to the world around me. Slowly and in the most unlikely of circumstances I see pockets of hope springing up, glimmers of God in the darkest of situations. I see Him in the marches across Ireland this week, in the public outcry and the response to the Belfast rape trial, I see Him in the stories of resilience that come out of Syria; in the Lebanese pastors providing schooling for Syrian refugee children, in the women and men who fight on the front lines of trafficking and prostitution.
I see Him in the middle of the night when sleep alludes me and the only thing that brings peace to my battered heart is to whisper a prayer and know that I am heard, loved. I have someone, who when I am sad, tells me tomorrow will be a new day and sure enough, if I look hard enough I can see Him in the beginning of each new day.
Silent Saturday may be our reality but Sunday is not only coming, it is all around us. Beckoning us in, holding our pain, calling us home. The dawn which seems so far away, does eventually, break. Saturday becomes Sunday and with it, darkness turns to hope. And hope does not disappoint.
ilooktothehills 