The Day With No Name

If we hope what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. - Romas 8:25


In Louisiana, a woman lies buried beneath a grove of 150-year-old oak tres in the cemtery of an Episcopal church. Only one word is carved on her tombstone: "Waiting."

A friend of mine knows an elderly pastor who delivered a stirring Good Friday sermon titled "It's Friday, but Sunday's Comin'." In a cadence that increases in tempo and volume, his sermon contrasts how the world looked on Friday - when the forces of evil seemed to have triumphed - with how it looked on Sunday. The disciples who lived through both days never doubted God again. They learned that when God seems most absent, He may be closest of all.

The sermon skips one day, though - Saturday - the day with no name. What the disciples lived through in small scale, we now live through on cosmis scale. It's Saturday on planet earth; will Sunday ever come?

That dark, Golgothan Friday can only be called good because of what happened on Sunday. Easter opened up a crack in a universe winding down toward decay. And someday God will enlarge the miracle of Easter to cosmic scale.

Meanwhile, we wait in hopeful anticipation, living out our days on Saturday, the in-between day with no name.

It's Saturday. But Sunday's comin'. - Philip Yancey


Dark was the night - sin warred against us!
Heavy the load of sorrow we bore
But now we see signs of His coming -
Our hearts glow within us, joy's cup runneth o'er! - Camp (c) Renewal 1941 Norman Camp

God took the worst deed of history and turned it into the greatest victory.

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Romans 8:18-25

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. For the creation waits eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it; in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. Not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body.

For we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees? But if we hope for that which we don't see, we wait for it with patience.

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