Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
Psalm 27:14

For Christ-followers, today is a day of anticipation. The brutality of what yesterday, Good Friday, represents — Jesus’ violent, unrelenting beating and crucifixion — still lingers in our minds. Of course we think about Christ hanging on that cross, but that’s not what Easter is for the believer. We don’t celebrate His death. We celebrate His sacrifice and His resurrection, and that celebration is tomorrow.

So here we are — knowing — that we are in the middle of what represents the darkest day and the most important day in history.

But that wasn’t so for those who walked beside Jesus, followed His real-time teaching, watched Him take His last breath, experienced the blanket darkness that marked His end.

In the final hours of Jesus’ earthly life, the whole land went dark. Luke 23:45 says, the sun stopped shinning. Then the temple curtain split in half. With a hush, Jesus breathed His last, and His earthly life ended. Can you imagine it? The eerie pulse that must have run through the spectators, reaching the fringe where His followers watched in silence. A crowd of believers and Jesus-haters realizing that what He’d been saying all along really was truth.

In a strange way, that’s when the emotional darkness began. No one knew that the very next day, Jesus’ followers would find the tomb empty, splayed open so the sun cut like a knife into the deepest, darkest corners. They didn’t know that so, so soon, the Light would drive out the darkness.

During that silent middle day, there was weeping, fear, confusion, doubting, debating. The disciples were frenzied, unsure. Former dissenters were in anguish that they hadn’t believed Jesus’ teachings.

There was crushing silence.

We know what happened next. Jesus rose from the dead. But that middle day, Silent Saturday as we now call it, that must have been hell on earth. It’s hard to image the darkness.

Or maybe it isn’t.

People walk through “silent Saturdays” all the time. Middle sections of difficult seasons. Times they’re waiting to hear from God, and feel untethered, broken, or alone. They love God and have seen Him do big things, but they’re still waiting for healing, for reconciliation, for joy, for Light.

Like those who waited more than 2,000 years ago, a new set of believers and Jesus-haters are waiting to experience the miraculous.

Glory is coming; that can be counted on. History proves it. The Bible promises it. The first Silent Saturday is proof that every single silent season will come to an end.

Jesus is always victorious.