Read Part 1: the surrender (day 1/7) - Blog # 27

Embracing our Grief: the Sadness of Saturday (day 2/7) - Blog # 28

Dear God,

Teach us that it is not wrong to grieve because when Jesus died, everyone who had put their faith in him, grieved as they suddenly lost the promise they were given for eternal life. I think of the woman at the well, did she question if her sins, her lifestyle, and her shame were really forgiven if Jesus had died? I think of the people who Jesus healed, did they think it had just been a coincidence of timing?

I think of Jesus’ mother, Mary, watching her son - her promised baby - die knowing that he was Son of God, yet not knowing what this defeat meant. I think of Mary and Martha, didn’t they see Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? Did they doubt Jesus could do the same for himself?

I think of the disciples, hiding, watching, waiting as the sky turned dark and the crowds got smaller and smaller but Jesus still laid limp. Did they believe in a lie? Did they get sold a fairytale? Did they leave behind their lives for a scam? Did Jesus trick them? I think of myself staring at the lifeless body of my own dream, trying to reconcile God’s goodness with the death of my promise, yet we have something all these people didn’t. We have the full story of the Gospel. We have the foresight that the promise dying was part of the greater plan, the “better yes”, and that on Friday it wasn’t the end of the promise but only the rising action to the climax to resurrection on Sunday.

Yet, God, You -- in all Your majesty, wisdom, and understanding -- didn’t raise Jesus right away. You had people mourn the loss of their savior. On Saturday, the Sabbath day, they had to rest and sit in their sadness. They had to battle face-to-face with their doubts. They had to confront their fears, their faith, and the idea they had of Jesus not coming true.

God, I pray that in the face of our disappointments, we would not brush away the pain, but would we sink deeper into You with our feelings. That knowing the promise ahead doesn’t erase the sufferings we endured, but it makes the promise even sweeter and the greatness it took to eclipse those afflictions even more miraculous.

Thank You, God, You don’t forget our pain, but You treasure our agony, our tears, and You give us space to grieve the loss of our promise. Be with us during this time.

In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

Sadness is not wrong. It is not bad. It is not a sign that God isn’t here and working. In fact, when we mourn, when we are brokenhearted, is God closest to us.

Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

This is who we are: the brokenhearted and crushed in spirit.

God is a God we can’t understand. He doesn’t fit into a box. He won’t match our logic. God has the promise die so that it can live. God has us die to ourselves so that we can live. God has us give up everything so that we have everything. God asks us to forsake our families so that we can be in a family. God lives in the realm of paradox. God occupies “I’m confused. This doesn’t make sense to me.” territory. That’s where He does His greatest work.

So, in our grief, it can seem like God is furthest from us. We feel abandoned by God. Betrayed. Forgotten. Forsaken. It’s our normal human experience to feel alone in our heartbreak, yet that is when God is actually right besides us.

God knows and experiences the greatest depth of suffering when He sends Jesus on the cross to die for us. God isn’t apathetic to you. God hears your prayers. God is with you. God let this happen. “God lets people get sick? God lets babies go unborn? God lets relationships end? God lets our greatest tragedies happen? Why would you think God is good?”

We must come to a place where we ask ourselves what is goodness? That we get what we want if we believe? “What if what I wanted was good?” but what if what God wanted was better? “How is this suffering better than what I wanted?” because God is good through the suffering not in spite of. God doesn’t offer a cure to the pain, He walks hand-in-hand with you intimately through the pain, to show you the greater glory ahead and the greatest comfort that only comes from Jesus.

God didn’t fail you when you encountered brokenness. God didn’t take His hand off your life for one moment. God’s purposes are coming alive as we speak. At the moment that you’re reading this. God is doing something, but before the something, before the Sunday of resurrection comes, we have to deal with the Saturday. Sabbath. In “Living in Sad Saturday”, they write “For us, Saturday is exciting because we know what happened on Sunday, but for the disciples, the Saturday after Jesus’ death was horrific. It was a day of great confusion, questions, and fear. For them, it was not Holy Saturday, but Sad Saturday; a Saturday filled with dashed hopes, disappointed dreams, and failed expectations.”

Do you feel like you’re in “Saturday”? Grief. Pain. Loss. Questions that go without answers. Dreams that were crushed. Promises that were left empty-handed. “What happened?”

People don’t really write about Saturday. We know about Friday (Jesus dies) and Sunday (Jesus rises), but on Saturday, the day of rest on Sabbath, Jesus rested from the greatest work mankind had ever seen. We have to remember that Jesus told them he would die and rise again in three days, but in that waiting was the space of grieving too. It’s normal to forget the promise God gives to us when we are in our Saturdays.

Friday they saw for certain that Jesus died, and that was one kind of grief. The immediate grief of disappointment that “things had not gone how we thought they would”. It’s the diagnosis. It’s the bad grade. It’s the rejection letter. It’s the “no” to your plans. It’s not the anxiety of worrying that something bad will happen. It’s when it does happen. It’s the sharp onslaught of pain that comes with the reality that something horrific has come and we must deal with it now.

Saturday is the space between the failed hopes and the hope to come reside, and that’s where the most uncertainty comes from. We can no longer hope in the original promise anymore. It’s gone. Taken forcibly from our grasps, yet our empty hands will be filled again with far surpassing goodness -- so we’re told. So, God promises. So, God spoke directly over your life BEFORE the Friday came. Yet, now our hands look stupid reaching out for something that may never come. It’s easy to close them. To pretend they were never out in the first place. To act like you always had them shoved into your pockets.

Do you know what it means to be courageous? It means believing again AFTER it didn’t come. It means trying again AFTER you failed. It means holding out your hands to receive again AFTER you had everything taken from you. It’s having the audacity to believe in the promise God gave to you AFTER the promise died right in front of you.

Why would you do that? Isn’t that dumb? Embarrassing? You already experienced disappointment once. Why go again? Why suffer again? Why not just take your losses?

Because we know about Sunday. In the midst of our Saturday, we know about Sunday. We were told of Sunday. We were promised Sunday. We are already given Sunday. Sunday belongs to you. Something the people who walked with Jesus knew intellectually but couldn’t comprehend internally yet.

Yet, we are also rightfully instructed to mourn Saturday. God gave space and grace to be sad. To cry out. To feel our hearts crushed. To feel air leave our lungs. To cry to the point we can no longer produce tears. That’s the thing: God wants you to feel the loss too.

Don't avoid or hide from it. That’s not how you get to Sunday. Sunday comes after the mourning, but if there’s no mourning, the full process of healing cannot take place.

In Matthew 5:4 (NIV) Jesus said, “Blessed are those that mourn.” Blessed are you for your grief. Do you know why? Mourning is where we are changed and MADE READY to receive the promise of Sunday. It is when you are brokenhearted that you experience God’s grace and comfort the most. Grief is the ingredient to spiritual growth and change.

In “Why is the Grief Process Important for Christians”, it says “we must suffer loss and grief in order to receive spiritual healing. Desperation comes before transformation in this aspect of the grief process. Matthew 5:4 (The Message version) explains this concept well: “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.””

Desperation is the feeling of grief. We are grasping at straws. We are left with nothing. We have nothing. We are nothing. Desperate. We have nothing to lose, yet in that moment God blesses us with the greatest gain: Himself.

The article continues “When I go through something difficult, I usually start by praying that God would fix the situation so that my suffering would stop. In the past, when I felt that my prayers weren’t being answered my way, I felt disappointed and turned to my own ways of escaping or bringing myself comfort by some earthly means.

I can honestly say I never learned anything about God’s will in those situations. Conversely, when I feel disappointed about my prayers seemingly not being answered and let myself grieve the life trial, I grow. Instead of my will being done, I start praying for what God’s will is for me in the situation.”

When we grieve, we accept the painful reality of the situation. We get to partake in God’s good plans by living in the present sadness. The sadness is PART of the good plans. We think if we’re upset, if we’re dealing with tragedy or loss, that it must not have been God’s plan. God must’ve not been happy with us. We must have misunderstood God. We didn’t believe enough so it was taken away. We weren’t faithful so that’s why the promise died. We had doubts so the promise didn’t come. No, we speak against that lie. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

God works by showing us through the “no” so many things. He shows us that the foundation we had was too shaky to hold the promise, so He wants to build from scratch a foundation that’s strong, stable, and sturdy enough to hold the weight of the fullness of his glory that the promise will take up. God says “no” to letting us avoid grief because we think grief is bad and sinful or evil. It is good to be sad. It is good to feel. It is good to let yourself sit in the space of unmet hopes and disappointments because that’s not where the story ends. In the Saturday, God molds us so that we know God’s promises are the only thing that can withstand the test of time, circumstances, and life.

In your loss, the only thing you can cling onto is God, and you learn what it’s like to only hope in God. Grieving is an act of faith. Grieving is honoring to God because it validates the true suffering Jesus had to go through to bear our sins. It is when we allow ourselves to sink, to be frail, to be human, to feel, do we allow God to be God to raise us from the depths into greater heights just like He did for Jesus.

Don’t worry about timing. Don’t worry about stages of grief. Don’t fret over when you should get over something or move on. People will tell you to grieve quickly because they love you, and they want you to feel better but you can only feel better because you allow yourself to experience the fullness of grief. To encounter the entire Saturday.

We need to understand that Sunday does not erase Saturday. The blessing, the greater promise, the goodness doesn’t mean the sadness, the grief, and the hurt never existed. It means that our pain counts even more in light of eternity. It only serves to further validate the wretchedness and brokenness of our existence to NEED such awesome glory to overcome and how good it is when God does come and fulfill the promise.

Prayer:

God, let us allow ourselves and others to be sad. Let us be graceful in these moments. Not holding ourselves to certain expectations and standards when it comes to grief and pain. Letting ourselves be who we are before you, in all our brokenness, is exactly how we start to heal. God, You are the one most intimately acquainted with grief. You know loss, and you weep. You understand pain, and you are called “a man of sorrows”. Let us take note, take example, and let ourselves rest on Sabbath by resting in you after our hopes have failed and our dreams have not been fulfilled. We take this time to let ourselves wait on the Sunday to come.

In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

Read:

The Lord Is Near to the Brokenhearted

Living in Sad Saturday

Watch:

Help I’m Hurting // Are You In Pain? // Help, I’m Hurting // Brie Davis