After three excruciating hours on the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Someone ran to fetch a sponge soaked in sour wine, primitive pain relief, but before they returned he cried out one last time, and then he died. It was over. Finished. Done.

Later in the day, toward evening, a highly regarded ruler among the people took courage and went to the Roman governor who had ordered Jesus’ crucifixion and asked that he be allowed to bury Jesus. Pilate made certain their was no life left in the body. He called for the centurion overseeing the execution who affirmed Jesus’ death. Pilate granted the corpse to Joseph who took Jesus down from the cross, wrapped the body in a linen shroud, and laid him in a newly hewn rock cave, a tomb in which no one else had been buried. Then he rolled a boulder against the entrance of the tomb.

And then . . . then there was silence. Grief. Disappointment. Disbelief. Death. There was only that dark wonder, that speech inhibiting cloud, that mind numbing confusion . . . and silence. No authoritative voice of instruction. No power-filled command of healing. No gentle touch of forgiveness. Just . . . silence.

You’ve been there, haven’t you? Your world filled with hope and wonder and joy and suddenly there is only silence. God seems absent, inattentive, inactive. Dead. Between Friday and Sunday, there is only a silent Saturday. Between the cross and the sunrise there is only a voiceless tomb. Between life and life, only death.

Many people live in “silent Saturday.” They live day after day wondering whatever happened to God. Whatever happened to truth and justice and promise. They long for some evidence of his mercy, some fulfilment of his plan, but they hear only silence, they see only a cross, and a tomb, and a rock.

Little do they realize that beyond the silence, God is at work. The apostle Peter includes these thoughts in his first letter to Christians at that time scattered throughout the world: “For Jesus also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison . . .” (1 Peter 3:18-19).

Peter refers to that silent Saturday, to that day while the body of Jesus lay wrapped in linen, bound in lifeless dark. God was working during the silence. While his body lay in the tomb, Jesus proclaimed his victory on the cross to those who had died, but in life had looked for his coming, who had loved God and trusted his promises. Then, Jesus ascended taking with him the men and women of faith, from the place of the dead to the place prepared for them, and for all those who put their faith in him (see Ephesians 4:8-10.)

The point in this: Silence is not always what seems. Sometimes it is the coiling of the spring just before the trigger is released, the gathering of the tide before the tidal wave, the inhale just before the fireworks streaking skyward explode in glory.

Take heart. Friday is past. Saturday is silent. But, to quote one preacher, “Sunday’s coming!”