Lent is: failing.

It’s Holy Saturday.

I’m keeping my room dark, my curtains drawn, this morning. To remember the darkness, the darkness of this day so long ago. 

All hope seemed lost. 

All hearts withdrawn. 

Words spoken so long ago—burned onto our hearts—seem silent now, gone with the one we buried.

Even the miraculous of yesterday—the torn curtain, the earthquakes, resurrection walking out of common tombs even as he was buried with the rich, the confession of a centurion— seem only disastrous. 

It’s Saturday.

It’s dark.

***

Waiting—even waiting in this dark Saturday for the dawn to rise—is never in vain with the Lord. We can never be put to shame when we wait upon him. I love these lines above. The deepest work of the Lord is in our soul—no matter what sort of season (bearing death or bringing life) we find ourselves in.

***

I feel in Job’s shoes in this season, again; therefore, these words hit close to home, close to hear: can I wait until the end—all the days of my service—for renewal to come, to stay, to comfort me, and then, to send me “home?”

This Holy Saturday reminds me that waiting is never without hope, even for Job, even for the true and better Job, who tomorrow will himself walk out of the tomb.

***

Grace had already started reigning on Friday. Righteousness was complete: the free gift made available. But, Paul later writes, that without the resurrection, we are to be pitied most of all. 

Without the resurrection, there’s no renewal Job longed for, no new life, no eternal life stamped and sealed for us in the Holy Spirit.

So today, we still rejoice in grace, but we remember how nothing might’ve really changed without the resurrection. That’s why, ultimately, Lent is failing. 

Because it asks us (at the end of the day) to remember, to own, to try and deny our flesh, conquer our sins, our habits that we’ve left to grace and not to resurrection’s true life change. 

And I’ve failed—I’ll always fail without Easter Sunday.

I’ve still watched too much TV. I’ve still had moments spent fleetingly dreaming about the future. And grace, thankfully, does cover those things, does cover me. 

But so does the resurrection!

Each day, then, post-Sunday-morning, is a day to remember the empty tomb, and the new mercies that bring us our of our own tombs. And that will ultimately bring us out of our earthly grave to unite us with him forever.

Let this truth light up even this dim Holy Saturday for you.