It is Holy Saturday. The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The day, as our Creeds say, “He descended to the dead.”

And already, my social media feeds are filled with Easter is coming!

Many want to move quickly past the silence of Saturday onto the great rush of emotion of Sunday. But let me urge you to resist doing that. Just sit in the silence. Be reminded that Jesus died and spent one Saturday descended to “hell” as one Creed says.

I won’t get into where he may have been and what he may have been doing. We will leave that to another day and time.

Too often, our society refuses to allow itself to simply grieve for the loss. We are uncomfortable with grief and silence so we fill it with platitudes and noise. Oh, we mean well. No one likes to see another person unhappy or grieving so we try our best to comfort. But what if the best thing we can do is simply sit with one another and allow the natural grief process, designed and given by God to bring healing, to do its subtle and important work?

The first Holy Saturday was a day of grief for Jesus’ followers. May we grow more comfortable in allowing it to be that way for us too. Experience the gravity of the day. Honor the loss of the first disciples and all others since including today by not rushing past but pushing in. Grief and hope are not mutually exclusive. In fact, grieving well, for those in Christ, is always done in the sure and certain hope that God is in control.

May we acknowledge, like the first disciples, that we do not know how this day (or season in our case) of trial and tribulation will end…and that there is much loss and much to grieve…and that we also know, in some way which defies description, that God remains in control.