Have you ever wondered?

This Thursday, our church will observe a Lord's Supper. Friday, we will have a day of prayer at the church ending in a remembrance service. Saturday, we have no formal plans. Sunday, we will celebrate our Lord's resurrection. This is a busy week. I am working on Thursday and Friday to help get us into the mood of Jesus' followers on Saturday.

It was Thursday when the first Lord's Supper was given by our Lord during a Passover Seder. Then, the Bible says, they sang a hymn and went out to the garden to pray.

Sometime during that night, the soldiers came and arrested Jesus. They took Him and ran Him through an illegal proceeding. Then they used their trumped up charges to try to have Him convicted by a Roman court.

Pilate was smarter than the Pharisees had anticipated. He resisted their efforts to get a death sentence. Yet, under great pressure, Pilate finally gave in and called for the crucifixion.

All of this happened on Friday, so that by about 3:00PM Jerusalem time, Jesus had died. He was buried before sunset so that the work would not occur on the Sabbath.

It is the Jewish sabbath, Saturday that I really want to focus on in this entry. It is a period of silence from the Bible. We are given no indication of what happened on that day in the text. But, can I dwell on that time for just a moment? This is not Bible, just Tony thinking out loud.

Those who had been following Jesus had seen Him die. Many of them had run away when He was arrested. I am sure word got around that He was dead. They must have felt lost. They must have felt very lonely. Everything that they had begun to hang their hopes and dreams on was gone. Jesus talked of a new kingdom, but now He was gone and there was no one to take up the mantle. Where would they go? What would they do? Could they just return to their normal lives? Too much had happened for that to be right. They had seen God's hand at work in miraculous ways. Life could never be the same again.

Did they expect Jesus to rise from the grave? I don't think so. Even though Scripture and Jesus Himself told them He would rise, they just didn't get it. (I don't think we would have gotten it either). From their reactions on Easter morning, it would seem they were totally surprised by the events of the day. There is no indication that they put the facts together and anticipated Jesus' resurrection.

Which leads me to the question of this posting. Are there not times when we feel as those followers undoubtedly felt that Sabbath day so many years ago? We feel lonely and afraid. We feel like we have seen some things and heard some things and life will never be the same, but right now we feel lonely. What we need to do to break out of this melancholy is focus our eyes on Easter. If the fact of an empty tomb doesn't make your heart jump, I don't know what will. If the fact that man's ultimate fear, death, was conquered by Jesus make you want to shout, I don't know what will. If the fact that the One who conquered death and the grave loves you personally doesn't give you a reason to live, I don't know what will. Have you ever wondered what our life would look like if we lived like it was Easter and not like it was Saturday?