Holy Saturday

We don’t like this day.

We prefer to move quickly from the cross to the empty tomb—from sorrow to celebration—as if the silence in between doesn’t matter.

But Holy Saturday won’t let us rush.

From the earliest days, the church has refused to rush past this moment. The Apostles’ Creed confesses that JESUS “was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended to the dead.” The Nicene Creed declares that the eternal Son “became man” and, for our sake, “suffered death and was buried.” These are not filler lines between Friday and Sunday. They are the church’s way of insisting that Christ’s death is anchored in history—with a real body in a real tomb.

From the beginning, some tried to soften this reality. Some said JESUS only seemed to suffer. Others claimed someone else died in His place. Still others tried to protect His divinity by diminishing His humanity.

But the eyewitnesses [John 19:25-30] and the testimony of the church has always answered clearly: The Son of God took on human flesh. He truly suffered. He really died. And His body lay in the grave.

Holy Saturday forces us to face that reality with the disciples that JESUS was dead. His body was placed in a tomb [John 19:42]. No voice. No movement. No miracle. Just silence.

And that silence is uncomfortable because it feels familiar. It feels like the prayers that go unanswered. The situations that don’t change. The relationships that are broken. The grief that lingers longer than we expected.

Holy Saturday reminds us: there are moments when God’s work is real… but not yet visible.

The disciples didn’t see victory. They saw finality. The stone was sealed. Hope felt buried. Everything JESUS promised seemed… undone.

We are tempted rush past the silence of the tomb, yet we are meant to linger here, because only then do we grasp the depth of what JESUS has done. 

On this day, the Lord of life entered death fully—not halfway, not symbolically—but completely. He didn’t just die. He was dead. And that means something for us.

It means JESUS has gone all the way into the deepest places we fear: loss, waiting, uncertainty, even death itself. There is no place we can go where He has not already been.

And yet, even here, God is working. Hidden. Silent. Unseen. Holy Saturday teaches us that God’s greatest work often happens where we cannot yet see it.

We live much of our lives in this space—between promise and fulfillment.

This side of heaven can feel like a lifetime of Holy Saturdays—waiting, trusting, not yet seeing.  But this day is not the end of the story. The silence is not empty. The grave is not ultimate. The waiting is not wasted. Because resurrection is already on the way.

So today, we don’t rush.

We linger.

We lament.

We sit in the silence. We acknowledge the grief. We feel the weight of what JESUS has done. And we learn to trust Him here. Because if God was at work in the tomb, He is at work in the places we cannot see.

Follow me…as I follow Jesus Christ.