Silence in the battle

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26

Exactly 2,021 years ago today, according to historical and chronological accounts, there was a day of complete silence, a Saturday without hope, and a day unlike any other the human existence had ever experienced. It followed a day of agony and despair, a day where tensions were high and dreams seemed to have found an empty tomb to go hide in for eternity, after battling death and presumably losing the war.

Imagine that day. Imagine having longed for better days all of your life to find yourself on your knees by a cross that is holding your very last breath back. Imagine the horror. Could this be all? Was I wrong? Was I mistaken? Was my heart deceiving me? When thunder rolled and the earth shook, God was not rejoicing - not yet - because even when He knew what was to come - with all the glory and all the victory - even the Creator dreaded the momentary silence of Saturday, the day before the resurrection. He didn’t dread it because of Him, He dreaded it because of us - who can’t possibly hold onto hope more than a split second when adversity enters the room. Heaven must have been quite the sight that day. “Nobody move”, God could have whispered. “They will figure it out”. Not only they witnessed the Captain of their Army abandon His human form to descend to battle in the devil’s house, but they also watched as His disciples mourned and lost all confidence on the Teacher - despite three years of walking side by side with Him, and experiencing His miracles on the spot, unfiltered and unbiased. I can see their faces, the tears rolling down their cheeks. Hearts pounding, souls aching. Where do we go from here?, they asked. How can He be gone? Where did we go wrong? Wasn’t Messiah our Savior? How can a Savior die on a cross, when no victory had been delivered yet? Were we deceived?

Meanwhile, Jesus was in fact fighting for them and for us. Demons surrounded Him. Satan raised the flames all the way to the sky, so that God could see His precious Son get killed forever. The arrogance of the fallen angel. “As if”, God whispered in his ear, as He watched Jesus rise up and combat legions of demons on His own, taking all power of death away from the one who thought he could win God’s war.

The day of silence was in fact a very loud day in the heavenly realms. The tomb was sealed just outside Golgotha. The disciples were lost in their grief. Pilate had washed his hands the day before, and now he just wanted to move on. The Sanhedrin was hoping to never hear the name of Yeshua again, while standing on a temple that had been destroyed by the wrath of ADONAI. The same day the angels roared as they saw their Captain win the war they all had been waiting for - and God said not a word, knowing that tomorrow everything was going to be different and nothing was ever going to be the same.

It was only a day of silence because faith is fragile and it withers without hope - a kind of hope that finds its light in that which we do not see, that which exists in our hearts and cannot be taken. Today is not a day of sorrow. Today is the day of the victory before a resurrection that will never be forfeited. Today is the day Jesus put on His armor and fulfilled a promise - that He would never leave us nor forsake us. Today and in our silence and in our pain, God hovered over the Earth to comfort us and assure us that He never lost control, and everything was going according to plan.

We need a day in the middle, a comma in our speech, something that tells us there is more to come. It is the day our faith is tested and also the day it is strengthened. The day we will know if we have what it takes to remain on the boat when Jesus is sleeping and the waters are rising around us. Will we trust in Him, despite our circumstances, even if we go through days of complete darkness? A million Good Fridays cannot change how magnificent God is. Our hope cannot die at the feet of the cross - that’s where our hope should go to begin! The day that follows is our day of reckoning, the day we assess if we have chosen life or if we have chosen death. Choose wisely. Choose wholeheartedly. Choose faithfully.

It is worth noting that the ties between the Great Sabbath and the Holy Saturday is exquisitely undeniable to me. The day before Israel was finally free from Egypt, before a night of death that passed over God's people. The Sabbath immediately before Passover. A day of new beginnings. A day of remembrance and of faith, a day of trust in what was to come. God sure knows how to weave our stories together. We belong to a family that adopted us into their Messianic circle as gentiles, and God made sure we could coincide on the day it all changed for each and everyone of us. The day God rested in the tomb, the Great Sabbath.

In our lives we all go through plenty of holy Saturdays, days when we simply cannot see a Sunday coming up. I am here to tell you to think of this holy day. There is always hope on its way to us. Do not despair. Everything that seemed dead will rise up again. It is all finished, and we can trust it will always be that way.

“50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, He gave up His spirit.51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open.” Matthew 27:50-52

“After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. 5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” Matthew 28:1-6