Reposted from last year:
We had such high hopes. We thought that the Long Awaited One had finally come. We could sense it when we were with him. Something about being with him made our hearts beat faster. We knew he had a special relationship with Ha Shem that no one else had. He understood the heart and mind and will of God, he understood the ways of God, and he was so eager to teach us and to show us! He wanted us to know God the way he knew him, as his Father! When he spoke, there was not only rock-solid confidence and uncompromising authority in his voice, but also profound love and deep compassion in his eyes, unlike anyone we had ever met before. He taught us how to walk through life without fearing the future, for he knew that God’s plan was unfolding— and somehow, he was at the center of it! By being with him, somehow we were at the center it! We were sure he was God’s Anointed One. We could feel it in our bones, and we could see it in his eyes. How his eyes sparkled when he spoke about God as his Father! He was the One who would usher in the coming age, the tikkun olam that was spoken of by the prophets — we were sure of it! Remember when he sent us out, two-by-two, to proclaim the Kingdom of God in all of the surrounding villages? Remember when we came back and gave him our report? Remember how excited he was— he even saw the evil one as lightning falling from heaven! Those were amazing days, to say the least! The things that he taught us made our hearts beat faster. When we were with him, the things that we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears made it impossible for us not to see the fingerprints of God all over his life and all over his teaching. When we were following this man, it felt great to be alive! Life was an adventure! The present was exciting, the future was secure, our joy was full, our hearts were overflowing. How great it was to be alive, walking the streets of Galilee with Yeshua! How we loved being with that man! And then they killed him. No, they didn’t stone him, the Jewish way. That would have been too kind. They crucified him, the Roman way. They had to make it as drawn out and as shameful and as excruciatingly painful as possible. And now he’s gone. How can we go on without our friend? How could we have been mistaken about his identity? Is there no coming tikkun olam? Were we believing in myths all these years? Has Ha Shem forgotten us? How can we have hope when there is no hope? As far as we are concerned, yesterday, on that cross, when Yeshua died, hope died. How can we go on? Truth be told, we don’t want to go on. We have no reason to go on. Hope is gone. Hope died on Friday. Today is Saturday, and we suddenly have nothing to live for, nothing to hope for, nothing to die for. It all happened just that fast. He’s here one minute, gone the next, and with him, everything we had ever hoped for— all gone in an instant. And now he’s in the tomb, and the tomb is silent— and the silence is a very loud silence. The silence is deafening! I guess we could go and visit the tomb, but what good would that do? Remember, it’s the Sabbath, so we can’t walk very far, and it’s the Passover, so we don’t want to defile ourselves. Besides, we’re supposed to be at home with our families celebrating the Passover— but the angel of death did not pass over Yeshua, and Elijah’s seat is still empty. We could reminisce, but that would just make us feel more sad and more hopeless. Where do we go from here? What happens after the Passover? What is the “new normal”? We could go back to our old jobs and our old routines and pretend that it was all just a dream, but we really can’t do that, and we really don’t want to. We can’t go back to what no longer exists. The world has changed, and we have changed— or so we had thought, but now we don’t know what to think. We sit here in silence. There’s nothing else to do. Saturday is the day of silence; the day of pause; the day of waiting for we know not what. It’s the day of suspended animation. It’s the day when the world waits. It’s the day when the world holds its breath. It’s the day of the drumroll that we think we may hear rumbling faintly, many miles off in the distance— but no, that must be our imagination. Nothing good is going to happen here any time soon. What can we do on Saturday? We can learn to be silent. We can learn to lament. We can learn to pour out our souls to God in utter honesty, as King David did in the Psalms and as Yeshua did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We can learn to listen to what is really going on in our own hearts and minds and souls. We can be honest. We can face our deepest fears and doubts. After all, God already knows how we feel, and there’s no reason to hide ourselves from ourselves when there’s nothing left to lose. You can’t get much lower than rock bottom. What can we do on Saturday? We can listen for the still, soft voice of God, as did the Prophet Elijah. We can strain our ears to hear what God might be telling us. It’s easier to hear when the world around us is silent and there is nothing left to distract us. What can we do on Saturday? We can learn to be less like Martha and more like Mary, as Yeshua taught us. We can’t surround ourselves with a flurry of activity and noise in a frenzied effort to keep ourselves occupied, distracted, too busy to think and feel. That doesn’t work when there is nothing left to do or think or feel. All we can do is sit and wait— sit at the feet of God and try our best to listen— but isn’t that exactly what Yeshua told Martha and Mary? Didn’t the “comforters” of Job sit with him in grief and silence for seven days and seven nights? Didn’t the psalmist say “He makes me to rest in green pastures”? Perhaps God is making us rest. After creating the heavens and the earth, didn’t Ha Shem Himself rest on the seventh day, the Sabbath? Dreams die on Friday, but if we are listening for the voice of God, new dreams and new hopes can begin to be stirred on Saturday. Nothing very solid, no “aha” moments, no amazing revelations from the heavens, no lightning or thunderbolts or visions in the skies, but the smallest stirrings of the faintest hope of new beginnings. That may be all we get on Saturday, but that is enough. A little flicker of hope is all that we need. Even if we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least we can begin to suspect that the light is out there somewhere. Maybe we’ll see it tomorrow. Didn’t the psalmist of old remind us “You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again” and “Sorrow may last for a season, but joy comes in the morning”? Is it possible that we can have joy again— maybe not today, but eventually? We remember what Yeshua taught us on that last night when we were all together— could it be that it was only two nights ago? He taught us “In this life you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world”. Something is stirring. A still, small voice is speaking. The smallest flicker of hope is being born. Dare we believe it? Dare we trust it? It’s not over. When we cannot see the hand of God, then we must learn to trust the heart of God— and the heart of God toward us is good. Yeshua taught us well, and he was right. The heart of God toward us is good. Sometimes the voice of God speaks the loudest when everything else is silent. Sometimes we hear the voice of God most clearly when we are lamenting in silence, too sad and too stunned and too weak and to numb to be able speak or to fix or to repair or to distract or to blame or to argue or to defend or to criticize or to rationalize or to analyze or to strategize or to give an opinion or to even have an opinion. That’s when we learn that today is not the end of hope. It’s the day of waiting. It’s the day before the day of new beginnings. It’s Saturday.
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