In the In-Between

The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday . . . it seems to be a time that gets little reference. Sometimes I wonder why we treat it as so insignificant.

It certainly wasn't insignificant for Jesus' disciple. Everything they had known for the last three years was thrown into confusion.

They were in between and left with what seemed like no hope. They didn't know what was coming. That Saturday, all they knew was that Jesus had been crucified and was dead.

And along with that went their dreams, their plans, their hope.

It's not a place we like to sit, because it's unpleasant. It's hard. It's dark. It's scary. We don't like to dwell on those things unless we know something good is coming.

So, we quickly jump to the resurrection. We want to jump right to the good - jump over the bad.

But in doing so, I think we miss some lessons that can only be learned in those in-between times.

If we're really honest, we can probably all share our own stories of living in the in-between. Of living in-between the death of something good and the start of something new.

We can identify more with the disciples on Saturday than we care to. We know what it's like to lose hope. To walk the hard, dark road.

That road may look different for each of us based on our own life experiences, but we've walked the road ourselves.

And looking back, we see all that we learned in those times. We see the lessons learned in the in-between. We see how we have become who we are from those times in our lives.

I would guess that each of the disciples was shaped by that time in between - when they learned the full truth of who Jesus was and what He had come to do.

We are profoundly shaped by what we learn in the in-between.

Maybe we need to become better at learning to pause in those times. And maybe we can learn to do that better by pausing on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday and remembering what it must have been like for Jesus' disciples and friends on that day.

If we take the time to do that, it makes Easter Sunday an even greater reason to celebrate. We've felt the loss of hope and now we can celebrate the fullness of greater hope than we could ever have comprehended without the time in-between.

How do you do at living life in the in-between?

Have you learned lessons that have shaped who you are today in the in-between?