Saturday Grief.

A heavy depression lingered in the house that morning.

The chaos and tragic activity of Friday were now merely shadows in their memories. His words spoken through heartbreak and torture on the cross still resonated in their ears. Everytime they closed their eyes a mental image of him hanging there -covered in his own blood, scratched up by the flogging, nails through his hands and feet, dead- that image was burned into their minds.
They hardly spoke to each other. Numbed by this deep sense of loss. An occasional teary glance caught the eye of another and that one look said everything; He's gone. He's really gone. They couldn't stop thinking about it. Replaying the events of yesertday over and over again. And it wasn't as if they could do anything to take their minds off of what had happened.

It was now the Sabbath, the day of rest. It was prohibited by Jewish law to do any work. They weren't allowed to go away to get away from it all because the law stipulated that you couldn't travel on the Sabbath. They were stuck in the house they were staying in with nothing to do but ponder yesterday and what it meant.
Often at Easter we tend to skip over Saturday. We remember Thursday and the meal. We briefly pause to remember what happened on Friday but we're all too quick to say '...but Sunday's coming!' Friday is too depressing, too violent, too heavy, too hopeless for us to want to hang around Friday. Jesus Died. He was actually physically, medically dead; not just out of shot or taking a breather, deceased, passed away. Friday hurts.
We certainly don't want to mope around in the heartbreak and grieving turmoil of Saturday. We don't want to be forced to contemplate and focus on Friday because the law permits us to do nothing else. We want Sunday! And in our haste to get to Sunday we forget Saturday, with all it's emptiness and regret; with all its why's and what-if's.

But if we allow ourselves to stop on Saturday; if we give ourselves a chance to grieve with a group of Disciples who didn't know Sunday was coming; if we pause just long enough to feel the heartbreak that Jesus is Dead on Saturday, we let ourselves sink to the lowest point. And from that lowest point what happens tomorrow is even more of a mysterious wonder!