What Will Be, Is Now

Nobody called it Good Friday that day, of course. That day was the worst day ever. Many of them had spent three years as this man's constant companions. At least one had known him his whole life. That day they watched him, their friend and son and teacher, the man who they were hoping was going to be the redeemer of Israel...die. Horribly. They listened to his enemies mock him, heard his cries of anguish, saw the pain on his face and were not able to do anything. Anything but stay there with him. (They probably didn't think until later about how much had already changed since Gethsemane.)

The holy week calendar just calls the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday "Holy Saturday." To them, it must have been Blank Saturday. Or maybe "What now?" Saturday. It was the Sabbath, so they gathered together, and they rested, but the excitement and promise and life were gone. God only knew where they would go from here.

He did know. He had even told them this was coming. When Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus, he laid the whole story out for them, and they must have felt like the fools he called them when they realized they'd just spent three days mourning when they should have been waiting with bated breath in expectation of the great things to come.

The fact that Good Friday once felt like the most soul-crushing, dream-dashing day ever bodes well for all of our bad days from here on out. The fact that Holy Saturday was a confusing blank frees us from having to know exactly how God is going to act, because the main thing is that he's going to act.

Offer your pain and your frustration and your confusion as a sacrifice to God, and rejoice even when it feels like you're being burned with the sacrifice. Because Easter Sunday is a fact, too.

Christ the Son of God rose from the grave in triumph over death, to lead those held captive to the fear of death out of that prison (don't cling to the prison instead of the person). He fulfilled the promises entrusted to the prophets, proving that God is trustworthy. The promises entrusted to the apostles built on those of the prophets, and all point to the fact that God is active in this world, and that horrible things precede things so glorious that they transform the ugliest past into something beautiful. Do you believe this?

Faith is looking at the world that is now through the filter of the world that is promised.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."--Romans 8:18

An Honest Mistake

Imagine you're the king of a region in the Middle East. You are married, but you've also got a bit of a harem going. You've heard rumors about a woman in a group of nomads who settled within your territory. Rumor has it she is beautiful, and better yet, beautiful and unmarried. Seems the leader of the nomads is her brother.

In addition to being somewhat of a connoisseur and collector of beautiful women, as a ruler you know the value of creating alliances. Taking this woman into your harem? Win-win.

Something starts feeling a little off, though. While the women of the harem are putting the new recruit through orientation on local culture and household expectations, which can take a while, there are no new pregnancies. This is against pattern in an unsettling sort of way, but you don't connect it to the woman's arrival.

That is, until you dream that God Himself is issuing you a warning. "Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman you have taken, for she is married."

This is a shock on two major levels. 1) You were repeatedly told she was not married. Even the leader of the nomads, her brother, reported that she was unmarried, and shouldn't he know? 2) You haven't even touched this woman. Which is also against pattern, now that you think about it, but for some reason it's been enough just to look at her as she walks around your house...somewhat mournfully....

Suddenly the final goodbye between that leader and his "sister" rises into your mind and you have never felt so duped.

"Lord, will You slay a nation, even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she herself said, 'He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this."

In the dream God replies, "Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her."

And everything starts to work itself out from there.

Why is this story in the Bible? (Genesis 20, check it out.)

Yes, it shows Abraham's lack of faith in God's protection, and God's persistence in protecting Abraham and Sarah anyway. Yes, it shows that the child to come, Isaac, was definitely the son of Abraham and not some foreign ruler.

But it's also about the king, Abimelech. And it's mostly about God.

A God who lets us make mistakes, even grievous mistakes, but keeps us from sinning in them. A God who responds to honest cries of "I didn't know this would happen" and "I thought I was doing the right thing" with "Yes, I know; and I was protecting you the whole time."

Which makes it a story about us, too. Thankfully.