Uplook - April 19, 2025

Dear Seattle Saints,

If you lived in the Philippines you would refer to today as Black Saturday....the day Jesus laid in the tomb between His crucifixion and his resurrection on Easter morning.  While we don't usually refer to this day with that title, it is a day of somber reflection of the mourning which took place on that day by Jesus' followers.  Grief and sadness were very much a part of their reality for the balance of Friday, all day Saturday, and at least at first on that first Easter.  A much larger reality which we now know and embrace as the resurrection was simply beyond their comprehension.    

A famous preacher once said "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming!"...and while as encouraging and hope filled as it is, it seems to skip over that long Saturday in between.  Yet I would suggest to you that just as God's plan included Calvary and the Empty Tomb, it also included Black Saturday...a day of mourning, grief, and loss between the two.  I suspect that day for the early disciples was unbearable and incomprehensible.   We also have times like that.  Often after tragedy or great loss there is a time in which everything just seems to go dark and numb and we are simply overwhelmed.  

But God was not and is not overwhelmed.   Calvary was part of a greater plan in which Easter soon followed and that grand plan will come to completion when Jesus returns for His Bride.   God also is at work in your and my situations even when they include great loss and grief and for us things seem to have become overwhelmingly dark and numb.   Sunday is certainly coming ...just as it did on that first Easter.  May we by God's grace, hang on to the knowledge that "he which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it" just as He did for Jesus.  

God bless you all ...Hope is on the way.  
BB
William E. McKibben
Senior Pastor