For When You’re (Still) Waiting on a Miracle...

What color is shock? What color is belief?

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Easter has passed and I’m still waiting for resurrection.

Hoping for, begging for, watching for signs of life. Straining my eyes for beauty in the ashes, listening intently for a whisper in the rubble.

There are many who say it’s best to wait until you’re on the other side before you write the story, before you say the words, before you tell what happened. Perspective and all. There’s wisdom in that, but if I'm honest, when I’m in a middle place I don’t only need to hear from those a chapter or two ahead… I need to know I’m not alone on this page.⁣

Today, I’m in the middle.

Today, I’m waiting for deep heartache to become a doorway of hope.

Today, I’m living in Holy Saturday, that great in-between day of confusion and questions, loss and sorrow.

It’s easy, even tempting, to skip over Saturday when we think of Easter. It’s more comfortable to move on to bright colors and hands raised, to worship songs and “He is risen” declarations. Despite writing an entire book for those in the messy middle, for those who need hope for tomorrow when today feels like a question mark, I’ll be the first to admit that if given the choice, I’d much prefer to hurry through to redemption and restoration.

I know what God can do, am fully confident of His power and rest securely in His promises, and yet here I am—and perhaps, here you are too—holding both the grief of Good Friday and the joy of Easter morning.

Here, in Saturday.

Here, in the in between.

Here, in the first part of Psalm 126:5.

“Those who sow in tears,” the Psalmist begins.

“What color is waiting?” one character asked another in a novel I read during Lent. “What color is sadness? Loneliness? Rejection? Shock?” The main character, an artist, finds herself navigating unexpected loss and grief that turns her world upside down. I slowly flipped the pages, pausing to consider, imagining a canvas covered in shades of gray as tears threaten to drip onto the page in my hands. A few days later, I stood in the paint aisle of my local craft store. In the days leading up to Easter, I added layer upon layer, thick strokes mixing together.

Then I went to the plant store. My hands, speckled with paint, planted seeds deep in the dirt. Seeds that look remarkably like tears.

It will be a while before the flowers begin to bloom. Time takes time, and today the color of waiting isn’t too far off from the Burnt Umber on the canvas and the dirt beneath my fingernails. Today, the middle is quite literally messy and muddy. But there’s a miracle hidden in the word itself, in naming something the middle, in the very place where we think “Yes, this feels like one long Saturday.”

If we’re in the middle, then it can’t possibly be “The End.”

We remember this at Easter as we adorn the cross and sing “In Christ Alone”, but it’s just as true every other day. The story was never, ever going to end on Saturday. After all, there’s more to Psalm 126.

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them (Psalm 126:5-6).

The Message translation says it this way: “And now, God, do it again—bring rains to our drought-stricken lives so those who planted their crops in despair will shout “Yes!” at the harvest, so those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.”

“What color is belief?” I asked myself this morning. What color is hope and trust, faithfulness and rejoicing? What color is the promise of resurrection? Gold, I decided. Starlight Gold, to be exact, swirling among the thick strokes of Cloudy Day, Midnight, and Smokescreen.

Light in the dark. Peace in the storm. A compass in the night. A tear-shaped seed cracking, breaking, bursting open so that new life can emerge. Ours is a story where resurrection is already and always on the way. 

I don’t see it yet, at least not in this particular middle place. I’m still watching, still waiting, still begging and believing that the page will turn. What I know, though, is that Sunday is always coming.

Today, I remind myself: We have a God who turned the very worst of all days into a day known around the world as “Good.”

Today, I remember: We have a God who doesn’t rush us through the middle of Saturday but instead joins us in the dirt, weeps with us in loss, and walks with us through heartbreak and confusion.

Today, I rejoice because: We have a God who came near in order to break open, who became a seed that was buried so that we might come home laughing, arms filled to overflowing with goodness.

Easter has passed and I’m still waiting for resurrection.

But if we’re in the middle, then it can’t possibly be “The End.”

(If you’re praying for resurrection today, know that I’m praying for you. This isn’t where the story ends.)

If you’re currently walking through a middle place, desperate to see God’s goodness in the chapters you wouldn’t have necessarily chosen, Even If Not: Living, Loving, and Learning in the in Between will help you shift from the suspicion that God isn’t kind or present to the truth found in Scripture: on every single page of the story, He is with us and working all things for good. We have not been forgotten or overlooked. There is beauty, even here in the Saturday seasons, but friend—this is not where the story ends.