I woke up one Saturday morning thinking about the disciples. Thinking about how they must have felt the morning after their Lord’s crucifixion.
I can only imagine that on the morning between His death and resurrection, Jesus’ followers must have awoken to an utterly consuming fog of bewilderment, a thick, weighty hopelessness that filtered their perspective.
Though Jesus had spoken to His disciples of His impending suffering and death, they never fully grasped all that He said; and the experiential realization of it surely rocked them to their core. Christ had been their life, their hope, their purpose, and their joy; but in the black night of Gethsemane’s Garden, everything they had been hoping in and living for began to unravel. And when it was all said and done, darkness and death had won.
Or. . . so it seemed on the frontside of Resurrection Sunday.
Has anything painfully shocking ever happened in your life? Something that rocked you to your core? A moment or a season when all of a sudden life turned to death? When what was once glorious was replaced with a grave? Maybe it came out of nowhere, or perhaps there were subtle (or even not so subtle) harbingers of its arrival. Regardless, the harsh reality of it hit you with magnum force, knocking the breath right out of you.
It has in mine.
In my experience, it was in the deafening silence of the mornings after that hopelessness vied to take up permanent residence. That questions swirled and twirled, and what-ifs—one right after another—lined themselves up, patiently waiting their turn for an audience of one. It was in this deafening silence that the cacophonous internal reflections of what I thought should happen. . . what was supposed to happen. . . what I prayed fervently would happen. . .fought for control of my confused, consumed mind. And it was in the continuing silence of the days that followed, in which fears and doubts, regrets and bitterness battled for domination.
So that particular Saturday morning, as I lay in bed thinking about the disciples on the morning between Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday and imagining how despondent they must have been, I could very much relate. However, instead of allowing myself to dwell too long on their consuming disappointment and hopelessness and the fact that I could very much understand what they must have felt, I found myself choosing to be thankful.
Thankful that because of Christ and all He endured and fulfilled for my sake, I can experience authentic hope and life, glory and resurrection, even after disappointment and death try to permanently dishearten me.
Thankful that this temporary life, with all its highest of highs and lowest of lows, is just not it. It’s not! Something more awaits me! Something my puny, finite imaginings can’t even begin to adequately conceive, though God’s precious Word gives me glimpses—the most glorious glimpses!—of it.
Thankful, so very thankful, that I'm blessed to live on the backside of Resurrection Sunday.
I sincerely pray, dear sojourner, that you're living there too.
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