Holy Saturday is a strange day.
We know how the story ends. Many of us have known since childhood. And yet there's something important we lose when we rush past this day, past the silence and the grief and the not-yet, straight toward Sunday morning.
So today, let's stay here for a moment.
The events of Good Friday draw us into a particular kind of stillness. The betrayal, the arrest, the torture, the crucifixion. The people who loved Jesus most, watching from a distance. The words he cried from the cross.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Those are words of lament. An authentic cry of the heart. Raw, unfiltered, and devastating.
But here's something that stopped me in my tracks when I first encountered it.
Dr. John Dickson, historian and New Testament scholar, points out that in Hebrew culture, citing the opening line of a psalm was understood to bring to mind the entire psalm. Everyone steeped in that tradition would have heard the whole thing at once.
Which means when Jesus cried out from the cross, he was not only expressing the anguish of that moment. He was calling to mind, and calling everyone around him to mind, all of Psalm 22. The full sweep of it. The desolation, yes. But also other parts specifically being fulfilled in that very moment, they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. And this: he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. And best of all this, at the very end: They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it.
He has done it.
Jesus knew what this Psalm contained and where it ended. Even there. Even then.
I find that almost unbearable to hold. Not because it softens what he suffered. It doesn't. But because it means the lament and the confidence were held together, in the same breath, in the worst moment in human history. The cry was real. The forsaken feeling was real. And underneath it, somehow, so was the trust.
It's not a bypass. It's a way through.
Lament in the Psalms almost always has this shape. The psalmist doesn't arrive at trust by suppressing the pain. He arrives by bringing the pain fully, loudly, without apology, and finding that God is still there. Not fixing everything. Just there.
The Question CS Lewis Left Me With
In The Screwtape Letters, the senior devil Screwtape warns his apprentice about the most dangerous kind of human. Not the one who feels God's presence and obeys. The one who feels nothing, sees nothing, finds no trace of God anywhere... and still obeys.
"Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."
Holy Saturday is that kind of day.
And it raises a question worth sitting with, quietly, today.
Can you look at what is falling apart in your own life right now, the places that feel forsaken, the prayers that feel unanswered, the losses that haven't resolved, and still say, not my will but yours?
Not as a performance. Not as a spiritual platitude. But as an honest, costly, Jesus-shaped act of trust.
That's the invitation of Holy Saturday.
A Few Questions to Carry Into Today
Sit with those honestly. Name what's hard. Don't rush past it.
And then... stay there just a moment longer.
Look honestly at what is broken, what is grieved, what is not yet resolved. And in the same breath, however quietly, however haltingly, offer it back. Not my will. Yours.
That's not resignation. That's the most courageous thing a human soul can do.
You Don't Have to Do This Alone
If this kind of reflection resonates with you, I want you to know there's a community of people doing this work together every month. This blog was adapted from our shared experience yesterday and today.
Soul Care Rhythms is a membership community built around daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual rhythms to sustain your soul health.. Each month, members gather for a semi-silent retreat: a few hours of guided solitude, reflection, and Lectio Divina with a theme that meets us where we actually are. This month, we engaged Lament, with Psalm 22. With the kind of honesty that leads not to despair, but through it.
If you've been doing the inner work of soul care mostly alone, there's another way.
You can learn more and join us at soulcare.com/rhythms