Micah Road Mysteries

Many years ago I hiked deep into the woods to go rock climbing with a group of friends. After a great afternoon of climbing we returned to the car and made a sickening discovery: the car keys were missing. We searched our backpacks and pockets, but the only explanation was that we had dropped the keys somewhere along the rocky trail. We were stranded. We were in the middle of nowhere with no food, no blankets, no car, no cell phone, no hope.

My friend, ever the optimist, searched his backpack and pulled out a small penlight. He was very delighted with his find. I was not. We were stranded in the cold, dark woods. There was nothing thrilling to me about a penlight.

He ignored my pessimism and planned to return to where we had been climbing and use the penlight to find our keys.

“But it’s DARK,” I pointed out.

He shrugged, grabbed the little penlight, and led us into the woods. I trudged behind.

My friend has always had a knack for finding his way through uncomfortable places. He walked along with the greatest of ease. I do not have a knack for walking through dark uncomfortable places and I was tripping and stumbling and getting scared. So my friend took his little penlight and held it behind him so I could see my next step. But the next step wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to know where we were going. So I ignored the spot of light and tried to see around him which meant I kept stumbling and tripping and even bumping into the back of him.

Finally he stopped, turned, and said, “You need to relax. Just look at the light.”

It’s hard to relax when you face the thought of spending the night in a dark forest, but I tried. I stopped trying to see up ahead. I let my friend lead and I focused on the small circle of light at my feet. I stopped tripping. It turned out that I had just enough light to see the ground around the next step. I had just what I needed.

Life doesn’t always work out like we plan. Sometimes we lose keys. Sometimes our friends betray us. Sometimes we get sick. Plans fall through and sometimes the things we think we can always count on, suddenly disappear.

There are two ways to handle those hard moments of life. We can keep stumbling and bumbling as we try to navigate the trail on our own. But I can tell you from experience that doing it on your own can be very frightening, dark, and confusing. The other option is to relax and to believe that God’s promise to us is much like how my friend guided me through the woods. God is ahead of us and leading us and giving us just what we need–enough light to take the next step.

Today is Holy Saturday–the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. I have often overlooked this day, but today I’ve tried to be intentional about its meaning–what it must have been like for Jesus and what it must have been like for His followers. Below is a repost of an earlier entry, but it seemed fitting for this day.

Living in Saturday

A friend of mine recently pointed out that while we focus on Good Friday and Easter, we make a mistake by not paying any attention to the Saturday in between. Most of us (me included) attend a Good Friday service, go about our normal business on Saturday, and then head to church on Easter morning. But my friend got me thinking about what that Saturday must have been like for those who loved Jesus.

Those who loved Jesus had just watched their best friend be murdered. That grief alone must have been horrible to bear. But there was more to it than just burying a friend. They had buried God’s Son and in doing so it must have felt like burying everything they believed in. These people had given their whole lives to Jesus in radical ways. They had left behind their families, jobs, and plans to follow Jesus. And now Jesus was lying dead in a tomb. The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how the disciples felt. And I don’t want to read something into the Bible that isn’t there. But I can imagine how I would have felt in that situation: lost, confused, sad, unsure of where to go next. I think I would have wondered if I had made a mistake. What was all of it for?

I think that all of us have lived or will live through a Saturday like the one before Easter–a time in our lives of sadness, grief, loneliness, or despair, a time in our lives where there just doesn’t seem to be any way out and we are unsure of where to go next.

But the story doesn’t end on Saturday, does it? Early on Sunday morning there is an angel and an empty tomb. Something unexpected and overwhelming and grand and wonderful not only shakes loose the grief and despair, but shakes the entire world… forever. He has risen.

So if you are living in a Saturday moment, remember the story doesn’t end on Saturday. Sunday will come bright and grand and overwhelming and unexpected–a sunrise cutting through the dark night. Sunday will come. Sunday always comes.

My family used to live near an empty lot littered with papers and cans and debris. One day, as my kids and I walked past the litter, my four-year-old daughter stopped and said, “God must be so sad.”

My three-year-old son agreed and together they decided that cleaning up the lot would make God so happy. We went home for trash bags and then spent a good thirty minutes picking up trash. The litter was everywhere and disgusting, but my kids were little troopers and took their job very seriously. By the time we finished, they had worked very hard and were very tired.

But there was the problem of the full trash bags; we still had to carry them home. I gave each child a trash bag to carry and each child looked at me like I had lost my mind and very freely voiced the expectation that I would be the one to carry all of the trash home. I reminded them how they had wanted to do this for God.

“We did do this for God,” they argued. “We picked up the trash. We didn’t say we wanted to carry the bags home.”

I explained that picking up trash included carrying it home to dispose of it. But they just didn’t want to do it. The bags were heavy. They were tired. They were done. So I put a bag in each child’s hand and lead my two wailing children home.

There have been many times in my life when I’ve acted like my wailing children—times when following God ended up costing more than I expected, times when following God didn’t feel good. And in those times I find myself thinking about how unfair life seems. I get angry.

But when I stop wallowing in my anger and start to consider what I know about God, my perspective begins to change. I know that God calls me His child. I know that God promises to never leave me. I know that He promises to never give me more than I can handle. And when I think about those things, I realize God’s response to my wailing might be like my response to my children on that trash day. Were my children uncomfortable carrying those bags? Yes. But the truth was they had a parent with them. I was there and I wasn’t going to leave them behind. They didn’t have to find their own way home. I led them. I knew what they could handle and I gave them the lighter bags to carry. I carried most of the weight for them myself.

When following God gets hard, don’t give up. Don’t give in to your wailing. Keep walking. Remember God loves you. He won’t leave you. He’s leading you. He’s carrying the heavy bags for you.

A friend of mine recently pointed out that while we focus on Good Friday and Easter, we make a mistake by not paying any attention to the Saturday in between. Most of us (me included) attend a Good Friday service, go about our normal business on Saturday, and then head to church on Easter morning. But my friend got me thinking about what that Saturday must have been like for those who loved Jesus.

Those who loved Jesus had just watched their best friend be murdered. That grief alone must have been horrible to bear. But there was more to it than just burying a friend. They had buried God’s Son and in doing so it must have felt like burying everything they believed in. These people had given their whole lives to Jesus in radical ways. They had left behind their families, jobs, and plans to follow Jesus. And now Jesus was lying dead in a tomb. The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how the disciples felt. And I don’t want to read something into the Bible that isn’t there. But I can imagine how I would have felt in that situation: lost, confused, sad, unsure of where to go next. I think I would have wondered if I had made a mistake. What was all of it for?

I think that all of us have lived or will live through a Saturday like the one before Easter–a time in our lives of sadness, grief, loneliness, or despair, a time in our lives where there just doesn’t seem to be any way out and we are unsure of where to go next.

But the story doesn’t end on Saturday, does it? Early on Sunday morning there is an angel and an empty tomb. Something unexpected and overwhelming and grand and wonderful not only shakes loose the grief and despair, but shakes the entire world… forever. He has risen.

So if you are living in a Saturday moment, remember the story doesn’t end on Saturday. Sunday will come bright and grand and overwhelming and unexpected–a sunrise cutting through the dark night. Sunday will come. Sunday always comes.