How Did They Get Out of Bed on Saturday?

When the first rays brightened the room that Saturday morning, Mary felt some relief. She didn’t have to pretend to sleep anymore. But when she tried to get up, her pounding head stopped her. Thirty-six hours of tears will do that.

When Mark came home the night before without his robe and described the scene at Gethsemane, her world began to fall apart. She tried to hold onto hope, but this was her oldest son, the one who had made her a mother and brought laughter to their home on the hard days. This was the son who always saw good in everyone. He was the kindest and gentlest child anyone in her village had ever known. How could they arrest Him? He would never hurt anyone.

Her oldest had stayed with her after Joseph died. When any other son would have been starting a family, Jesus had continued to provide for her and his younger siblings. For more than ten years, he got up six days a week and used the craft His father had taught Him. When James and Jude were old enough to help take care of their small garden and milk the cow every day, Jesus spent months at a time forty miles away as part of one of Herod Antipas’ crews building Tiberias . He had managed to put aside enough that when he left Nazareth to do what she knew He had been born to do three years ago, she had all she needed.

Now, her sweet, caring boy was gone.

Mary lay there on the cold floor, exhausted. She hadn’t had a moment of sound sleep since she woke on Thursday morning. She should get up and help their hostess set out the Sabbath breakfast, but the scenes from Golgotha left her numb. The images had played over and over again in her mind all night. She saw her son’s face covered in blood and the skin just barely hanging on His back. Would she ever be able to stop seeing those nails being pounded through his wrists? How many nights would the ringing of the hammer haunt her?

She finally turned to the prayers she’d been taught as a child.

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death . . .

And as she whispered the Psalm, she saw a new image. An oddly familiar-looking old man in priests’ garb held a baby. He spoke in her vision, but the only words she could really understand were a few she had heard thirty-three years before: “And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

The memory startled her. She hadn’t thought about Simeon and Anna for years. She and Joseph had spent much more time in the temple that day than they’d planned, but there was something about the old priest and priestess that had made the young couple hang on every word. She had only been sixteen, but she still remembered.

“My eyes have seen your salvation… A light for revelation to the Gentiles.”

Suddenly, a vision of her twelve-year-old sitting on the floor with a dozen teachers and priests hanging on his every word took her back eighteen years. And then she heard the words of Gabriel as if he were standing right in front of her again, “. . . son of the Most High . . . His Kingdom will never end.”

In the midst of her pain, she found hope, and she continued to pray:

My soul glorifies the Lord
my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
He has been mindful
of the humble state of His servant.

The Pain of Saturday

I can’t imagine how difficult Saturday must have been for Mary. James, Joseph, Simon, Jude, and Jesus’ sisters were probably there too, since it was Passover.

Mary came to mind first thing today. I imagined her still grieving, reliving the events of Friday. But when I asked God how Mary had been able to function on Saturday, I remembered that our Creator promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  Mary found favor with God. He wouldn’t have abandoned her in the hour of her greatest pain.

And he won’t abandon us either.

If you haven’t faced a Saturday yet, you will. Everyone on the planet goes through many Saturdays in their life—those days when God doesn’t come through the way you expected. Life got hard, but you trusted Yahweh to rescue you. You expected a Red Sea or a fiery furnace moment. Surely at the last minute, your Savior would shut the mouths of the lions.

Saturday is any day He doesn’t.

The cancer came back for the fourth time, your mother died, your wife didn’t recover, your brother kept drinking. That’s Saturday.

You prayed and called in every prayer warrior you know, but the pain didn’t go away, your child’s birth defect kept her in NICU for months, the tornado destroyed your home. That was Saturday.

But if we’ve been walking with God, we can count on Him to show up on Saturday. We’ll still grieve. The pain will be real. But if we let Him, He will give us glimpses of the ways He’s rescued us in the past to remind us Sunday is coming.

They Remembered

I believe that as Mary remembered what God had done for her in the past, wonder about how He would work the cross for good started to bring light to her darkest day.

Imagine Mary and Jesus’ siblings sitting with Mark and his mother as the Eleven started sharing stories. Perhaps Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were still in the city.

“He warned us this would happen, guys.”

“Why weren’t we paying more attention?”

“After watching Him heal those lepers, I kept expecting Him to come off that cross.”

“Wait a minute. Does anyone remember what He said the first time he turned over those tables?”

“Yeah, wasn’t it something like, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again on the third day.”?

And Mary just took it all in. According to scripture, she was really good at pondering things in her heart. Did she look over at Lazarus and realize he had been dead, too? Did Jesus raise his friend just so they could look at that day with hope a couple of weeks later?

Today, we have more than Lazarus’ resurrection to hold on to. We have Jesus’ resurrection and the promise of eternal life to keep us going.

Remembering what God did won’t take away the pain of Friday, but it can make Saturday bearable. It can give us hope so we can make it through.

So, the next time you wake up, and you’re living in the dread of Saturday, remember everything Christ has already done for you and take hope in the fact Sunday is only one day away.

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