Be Still And Know, Day 6
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Be Still Devo Day 6
WAIT FOR THE LORD
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Ps. 130:5-6)
Today is Holy Saturday – the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. If the Easter weekend has a middle-child, this is it. In danger of being unnoticed and overlooked, crowded out of the limelight by its more demanding or more impressive siblings.
We don’t tend to pay much attention to this day, at least in part because we don’t know what to do with middle-space. We are uncomfortable with incompletion; uncertainty unsettles us. Unfortunately, we find ourselves knee-deep in middle-space these days:
Waiting for the virus to pass
Waiting for schools and businesses to reopen
Waiting to meet as a church again
Waiting for playdates, and dinner parties, and nights at the movies, and…
That being the case, perhaps Holy Saturday opens important space for us this weekend. It invites us into the discipline of waiting, joining Jesus’ followers in an unsettled and unsettling middle-space. That’s definitely where they found themselves after Jesus’ death – living in the dark shadows of the cross and still a day away from the bright rays of Easter. We join them there with our own questions and confusions; our own sense that things are not yet how they should be or – one day – will be.
Maybe it’s your anxiety about the current situation. Perhaps there is a need within your family that seems to be deepening. It could be that you’ve been praying for something – or someone – without any sign of an answer.
What are we supposed to do with all this?
We wait.
But the way we wait matters.
The watchmen in Psalm 130 wait for the morning. Surrounded by the dark of night, they watch for the first gleams of light, certain that the sun will rise and bring a new day. We wait for the Lord with this same longing and confidence. We wait with hope.
We said at yesterday’s Good Friday service that the God who rests is always at work – even when it doesn’t look like it or feel like it. His ways are often hidden and sometimes surprising. The disciples on that first Holy Saturday were enduring the darkest of nights, but it was only a matter of hours before the sun would rise. Everything would look different in the light of that day.
So let’s join them today, bringing with us our fears and our frustrations, our doubts and disappointments. Let’s enter into Holy Saturday, but with eyes to the East, watching for the first rays of dawn. The sun will rise.
But for now, we wait.
Further Reading:
Psalm 130
Key Verse:
“O Israel, but your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.” (v. 7)
Calibrating prayer:
God, you are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Thankfully you are also the God of the middle. The God of today. Thank you for making space for me and my questions. I know the sun will rise and the shadows will scatter. In the meantime, I watch, and I wait.