Between

What do you do in between?  When the hardest thing has happened, when the storm has passed and you look out and survey the damage, and oh it’s worse than you could have imagined?  A cross, and nails, and blood poured from a multitude of wounds, blood that was shed for YOU, shed for me, shed for all the billions of people who will ever walk this Earth.

What do you do when you’ve seen your hope die right in front of you?  When you can’t see the light of day for the black despair that surrounds you?

It’s the day before Easter Sunday and we can reflect and imagine what it might have been like for those first Believers.  When they had seen Jesus – the One Who claimed to be the Son of God – crucified on a cross between two thieves like a common criminal.  He told them He would rise again in three days, and we can rest easy today because we know He did exactly what He said He would do, but those Believers then couldn’t know that for sure.  Not yet. They were between.

Between the misery and the miracle.

Between the despair and the delight.

Between the mourning and the morning.

Between the graveclothes and the empty tomb.

Between the cross and the resurrection.

I wonder what the disciples said to each other in the days between Christ’s death and His resurrection.  Did they reassure each other?  Were they too stunned and grief-stricken to say much of anything?  They’d seen Him do miracles, but this?  Rising from this death – could that beyond the capability of even this man who claimed to be the Messiah?  According to John’s account of the first Easter, they hadn’t gone far because at least some of them were close enough for Mary to alert them that His body was missing from the tomb.

It’s black when your hope dies.  But don’t let your soul get mired down in the despair.  It truly IS darkest just before the dawn.

It may look hopeless right now.

But hang on…

Sunday is coming.

What man has destroyed, or attempted to destroy, God is going to raise from the dead.

Hallelujah!  He is risen!

(Photo by Beliefnet)