Trusting "Hope's View"

As Easter comes and goes there are a few things that remain with me, one is Silent Saturday. The day the disciples hid away and wondered what next? The Silence was probably defining for them all as they feared for their lives but also lost their best friend. I wondered if they thought that all they had worked for was finished or that during this time they couldn’t see what good could possibly come from all of this. Even though Jesus talked to them about His death and told them to trust Him, in the dark silence it was hard to remember this.

I was reminded that on that day, which was so silent, God (Jesus) was actually doing something very powerful.

Thomas Aquinas says, “God is working in the silence”.

There are a lot of different beliefs about where Jesus went on that day. I don’t want to get caught down that rabbit hole, but I do or ‘have’ to believe Jesus was doing something in the silence.  I know for the disciples that must have been a long day and yet, there are many of us for whom God seems silent for longer than a day … a month, a year, years, and I have learned over the years there are things that God is forever silent on.  Now this is a dangerous rabbit hole to go down, and the last few years when silence is all I have heard on questions and challenges that life has thrown my way that I do not understand, I have learned that it is important when this happens what you do with the silence.

We have all felt that despair, the confusion, the loss, the questioning. I have run from the silence and feared it. I understand losing a best friend, losing family, feeling like all I have worked for is finished, and ask often what good could possible come from all of this. I am so thankful for the fact that not only the disciples but many of God’s faithful express their pain and confusion throughout the scriptures. I am hopeful that when Jesus was in the garden and said to His disciples, “this sorrow is crushing my life out”, (Matt 26:38) and then walked a little deeper into the garden and cried out to his father, “My father, if there is any other way, get me out of this. But please, not what I want, you do what you want,” (Matt 26:39), that He knows our sorrow in the silence as well.

He cried out on the cross, “my God, my God why have you abandoned me?” (Matt 26:46). He knows that it is in the silence, in the times when it all feels too hard that is not the time for answers or clarity, but it is the time to trust that God’s plan never changes, that His love is constant. It is when we want to ask “why”, that He gently says, “will you simply trust in who I am”. I don’t say this lightly, this is not an easy path, it is not comfortable. This is the narrow path and Jesus walked it as a living example of the cross we are called to bear.

Yes, Jesus rose on the third day, and I know this is vitally important to hold onto. Our human nature longs to live in Resurrection Sunday, and to so quickly move on from the persecution and pain of Friday, the silence of Saturday. But in this broken world, there are days when it feels like resurrection is so far away, and the silence feels too hard. If you feel that as well, you are not alone.

As I am learning to embrace the silence, walk in what feels like darkness, He is teaching me to find “hope’s view” of life while here on this earth.  I have a long way to go, but I know I am not alone.

I feel like I have heard all the “Christianese” trite answers that good meaning people want to give you, and I am not going to give them to others. But I will say that as I watched “The Chosen” this Easter and watched the pain and heaviness of Jesus as He rode on a donkey, walked the streets of Jerusalem, shared the last supper with His friends who would soon betray Him, clear the temple with His whip and at times in the middle of nowhere just keel over in pain as He began to become aware of the end He was walking to, I was thankful for a real portrayal of a Jesus who knows our pain and confusion and walks with us in the silence and says, “I walk with you”, “I love you and will never leave you", and will you simply trust "hope’s view”?.