The Day in Between

Dads,

Today is the day between the Crucifixion of Christ and the Resurrection. It was a day of intense sorrow, confusion and doubt. I can only imagine what Peter must have felt like... to have betrayed the man he loved on the worst day of his life. The other disciples were despondent and grieving intensely. I believe that the reason Thomas was not there with them to witness the return of Jesus was because he couldn't bear the grief and had to be alone. He was so sure that his grief was justified, he would not believe until he saw with his eyes. His faith was shaken to the core. He was spent.

I offer the following from my Pastor, Brad Shedd as he shared from Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus by Wayne Stiles:

Roosters don’t observe the Sabbath, it turns out.

Peter would have awakened Saturday morning to the loud, repetitive and humiliating reminder of his denial of Jesus and of the Savior’s piercing gaze. The reality of facing every morning for the rest of his life with a raucous flashback of his failure must have seemed unbearable. Just when Peter thought he could weep no more, the bitter tears must have flowed again down a face wrinkled with regret.

No doubt Saturday dragged long in the thoughts of Jesus’ disciples. The Sabbath allowed for no work or considerable activity. It was as if God’s Law forced on them a time to sit and think . . . and lament their failures. The cross had thrust them into the ugly face of their misplaced hopes for glory.

Jesus would show them that the Messiah didn’t fail their expectations. Quite the opposite! Their own expectations had failed them.

It’s the same with us.

I think when we find ourselves most disappointed with life, it’s not because something in life has failed us. Rather, our expectations of what life “ought to be” have failed us. Or understood a different way, when we find ourselves most disappointed with God, God has not failed us—our expectations of God have failed us.

Sometimes when our faith is too weak to trust God, He puts us in a place where our weakness forces us to surrender. Not to trust, but to surrender. Surrender then lays the groundwork for trust, because God always shows Himself faithful.

The shattered disciples had built their hopes on their own dreams of glory and greatness and not on what Jesus had told them (see Luke 24:13-27). Greatness in God’s eyes comes through living with a servant’s heart—the kind of life Jesus had modeled in His life and in His death. Though they had walked in the footsteps of Jesus for years, they had failed to hear His words. Even being upstairs with Jesus and eating the Passover lamb had failed to open their eyes. It took the cross.

Jesus clearly foretold His death to His men—and it unfolded with all the uncompromising precision He predicted. But His death wasn’t all He promised. It was only the beginning.

In creating the world, God ceased working on the Sabbath, or Saturday. That means that Godbegan creation on a Sunday morning, the same day of the week Jesus rose from the dead. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6, NIV).

The next morning as the sun pierced the darkness, Peter’s rooster would crow again, announcing a very, very different new day.

Today, I encourage us to dwell on the meaning of the absolute defeat the disciples were enduring on this day and how they, with the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Resurrection, changed the world forever. 11 men and some women changed the world because they witnessed the most amazing event in the history of man...Jesus bringing himself back to life. Wow. He is Risen! and the tomb is STILL empty.