The Silence of Saturday

I should not be surprised at all that he asks questions.  That is what kids do.  They ask questions that parents struggle to answer.  

He usually wants to know when he will hit his growth spurt.  He really wants to know when he will be an "adult."  He wants to know who he will marry and how will he know she is the right one.  He wants to know what he should do as an adult.  He really wants to know how he will figure all this out.  His mamma does not know.  His mamma on her best days can not answer these questions for herself. 

But Saturday he wanted to know two things.  And his mamma didn't know the answer to those questions either.  He wanted to know what the disciples did on Saturday.  And he wanted to know when we would find out about the resurrection. 

I told him as we dug in the dirt and pulled weeds and cleaned up the garden, I don't know what they did.  The gospels were remarkably silent about Holy Saturday.  But I suspect they told the story.  I suspect as all grieving people do they told the story of their loved one over and over and over again until it became real. They told the story so they would remember.  They told the story so everyone else remembered too and didn't forget the importance of the one gone.  I suspect that it was here the gospels began.  But I told him I really don't know.  But it was a good question to think about.  What do you do when hope is gone?  How do you choose to respond when it appears to be over?  How do you go on?  What do you cling to when what you were clinging to is no longer?  What do you do when you don't know what to do?  How do you get back up when it appears you are defeated?  What do you do when the worst thing has happened?  I told him I hope he remembers this...For each week of his life...there is only one Saturday...AND there is only one Sunday. And I told him he gets to choose which day he will remember.  I told him which day he chooses to live in determines whether or not he lives in joy or despair.  I told him he gets to write the story.  I told him that I hope he gives no credence to the Saturdays of his life...that he views the Fridays as Good...and in the spirit of the gospels...focus on Sunday...focus on Sunday...don't make Saturday the highlight.  And the gospel writers could have...they could have told the story differently....The gospel writers could have focused on the silence of Saturday and not the applause of  Sunday...It would have been easy to do...It would have been easy to take that awful story of Friday, live in Saturday and never see the truth of Sunday...and had they chosen to focus on the silence of Saturday instead of the thunder of Sunday...then the truth of the resurrection would have never left that garden.

I laughed at his second question.  Laughed hard.  And reminded him that when he was 5 and he ate all of his chocolate Easter bunny (all three of them), by 9 am in his church clothes and unbeknownst to me, and he was covered in chocolate and I was struggling just to get him clean enough for church (as if), and I was frustrated that his Easter shirt was a chocolate mess, and his shoes looked like he had played 9 innings of baseball in them, and I was in tears, and my ham was not glazed and my table wasn't set and I had 15 coming to dinner, and my cake was less than perfect,  he said this...."Don't worry Mom...they will tell the same story next year." They will tell the same story next year.

So I said to him,  I guess we find out about 11 am.  About the time the choir sings the first note Charles Wesley's most famous hymn (or at least I think so, but then he wrote about 1000 or more so, who really knows)....Christ the Lord is Risen Today...Alleluia...  But I also said, isn't it sad that we can't remember from one year to the next much less one week to the next...the joy in the story...that death is no more...that hope is alive and well...and isn't it really sad that for the most part we only sing that very famous hymn only on one day of the year...and isn't sad that we behave on most days as if we have nothing at all to be joyous about...when we have everything in the world to be joyous about...everything...and isn't it sad that we live as if the silence of Saturday says it all.  It is a choice. We choose which day will be the highlight reel of our own stories.  Do not live as if Saturday says it all and is if  you have never heard the story of Sunday.   Live as if it were 11 am Easter Morning every day of your life...

And when I read her blog this morning, I think she was right. And I read it through tears.  It is the best way to live on Easter Monday or any Monday for that matter.  And I think she is right, we all live through Fridays and Saturdays and wonder is it really worth it...and it comes down to this......will we focus on the silence of Saturday or will we live in the thunder of Sunday on Monday?

Choosing joy all my dear friends because all is grace...


For the rest of the story on how to live on Easter Monday..www.aholyexperience.com