April 11, 2009
The Day With No Name
Romans 8:18-25 (Today's New International Version)
Present Suffering and Future GloryI consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In Louisiana, a woman lies buried beneath a grove of 150-year-old oak trees in the cemetery of an Episcopal church. Only one word is carved on her tombstone: “Waiting.”
A friend of mine knows an elderly pastor who delivered a stirring Good Friday sermon titled “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Comin’.” In a cadence that increases in tempo and volume, his sermon contrasts how the world looked on Friday—when the forces of evil seemed to have triumphed—with how it looked on Sunday. The disciples who lived through both days never doubted God again. They learned that when God seems most absent, He may be closest of all.
The sermon skips one day, though—Saturday—the day with no name. What the disciples lived through in small scale, we now live through on cosmic scale. It’s Saturday on planet earth; will Sunday ever come?
That dark, Golgothan Friday can only be called good because of what happened on Sunday. Easter opened up a crack in a universe winding down toward decay. And someday God will enlarge the miracle of Easter to cosmic scale.
Meanwhile, we wait in hopeful anticipation, living out our days on Saturday, the in-between day with no name.
It’s Saturday. But Sunday’s comin’. —Philip Yancey
2 comments:
I don't get it.
The Lord speaks to each of us in so many different ways ... through His word, a prompting from a friend, a still small voice in our heart, circumstances, a devotion ... the Lord may not quicken this devotion by Philip Yancey to you, but was piercing to me ...
We live in an ongoing "Saturday" ... the place between Good Friday, in 33AD when Jesus' ultimate sacrifice of death brought us the mantel of His forgiveness and righteousness, and OUR Sunday which has not yet come, the day in which our resurrection, restoration, and reward in Heaven will occur (i.e., the 2nd coming of Christ).
So here we plod (and dance, and anguish) through a life of Saturdays, with the eternal hope of the most beautiful and powerful Sunday ahead.
May your Saturday, TODAY, be blessed my friend ~ Sunday's Comin' !
♥ Sherrie
Post a Comment