On Rest
Today is Holy Saturday, the day in which Jesus was dead. Buried. Gone.
Yesterday was Good Friday. All the tragedy and horror, all of the confusion and grief and anger, all of His passion is past, and we are left with the quiet blankness of a day without the One who came to give life abundant.
Tomorrow will be Easter. We will celebrate the risen Lamb of God. We will feast and sing and thank and praise.
But what about this day in between? What is today for?
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, and far, far away, there was a wicked king. This king had enslaved an entire nation and forced them to build his cities and monuments. He murdered their children, and he kept them in abject bondage in a foreign land for over four hundred years. But they had a promise that kept them going: God had promised them that He would deliver them and give them a land of their own. And one day, He sent a deliverer, and they escaped the hand of the wicked king.
This group of people left the land of their enslavement after a series of miracles and trials, finally freed to find the land of their own. The journey to the Promised Land was fraught with danger and deprivation. They wandered through a desert, fled before an army, confronted an uncrossable sea; they were hungry and thirsty and had no resources of their own to carry them through.
And yet.
Their God shaded them from the desert sun and warmed them in the dark cold. He defeated the army without them having to even raise a shield or a spear. He spread a path for them through the sea, fed them with bread and meat, provided water in the desert, and even kept them clothed and well-shod. His resources were infinite, and He slowly, patiently lead them toward freedom. Their deliverance was complete and the provision was boundless.
One day, they arrived at the border of the land that was to be theirs. To be really, truly free, all they had to do was take one step. To enter into the land of promise.
Tragically, they balked. They had not left their slavery behind them; they carried shackles of shame and fetters of fear, and they could not believe, deep down, that their freedom was reality or that their needs were met. They hesitated on the brink of rest.
A few years ago, when I was in that Bible study I mentioned, I read about these people in the book of Hebrews. I saw how, though skeptical at first, they began to trust, to take one step, to embark on the path. I followed them as they followed the messenger who had been sent. They were promised rest, and I was ready to rest with them. But they were scared because the rest did not look like they expected it to. There were giants in the land of promise. There were battles ahead. How could that be rest? They had thought that escaping from slavery meant that the harrowing, dangerous part of the story was over. They were tired.
They refused to enter God’s rest.
It says, in Hebrews, that it was because of their unbelief.
Today, the rest does not look like we expected it to. Today we sit in the empty waiting, waiting for the empty tomb. But do we enter in? Do we take this one step, believing that He keeps His promises? He rests from His labor, and invites us into the quiet of the dark depths of death, only to find that He is there waiting to meet with us. To be God-With-Us even in the valley of the shadow.
from Death, be not proud by John Donne In rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.