Journeying to Easter - Part 3预览

What happened to the plan?

The hours following Jesus’ death would have been agonising for His followers and family. Imagine the confusion Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had as they rushed to bury their Lord. Their task afforded them some form of closure at least. Consider the disciples’ grief as they plummeted into the void where hope and expectation had once been. Every visible, rational evidence confirmed that the Messiah was gone.

Jesus had peppered His ministry with pointers to His death as a central part of heaven’s perfect plan, yet they still fell prey to the most common of human failings: the maxim of seeing is believing.

It just never occurred to those closest to Jesus that they were being called to wait. Waiting is hard, isn’t it? We may theoretically believe that God is always at work, but in the silence, doubt creeps in. The disciples did not yet understand the fullness of God’s plan. That long, dark Sabbath must have felt unbearable.

While they could not see it, God’s plan was still intact and precisely marching forward to heaven’s greatest revelation since creation. The world may have thought that Friday was the end, but Sunday was coming. The stone would be rolled away.

When we find ourselves waiting, imploring the Father for answers, struggling to see anything beyond our present pain, let us remember the in-between of Easter. In our waiting, let us not mistake silence for absence. God is not finished yet.

Written by DWAYNE JEFFRIES