A Great Stuckness

   My thoughts as I walked this morning early were on the events of Easter, and particularly on the lives of those disciples of Jesus as they woke up and lived through Saturday, the day between the awfulness of the crucifixion  and the glories of Easter, a day they could not see yet.

   ?here was probably not a "one size fits all" type of reaction to the events of that Friday. It was certainly not a "good Friday" in their minds. They may have been emotionally drained, they may have wanted to stay in the bed and pull the covers over their heads, they may have spent this Sabbath Day worrying about what was ahead for them.

   In the words of the old golf saying, they were like "a lost ball in the high weeds".

   They were stuck in Saturday, a day they did not particularly want to live in.

   These 11 men, and the others who had been close to Jesus were stuck, like we were yesterday in Savannah.

   We were driving to some friends house for lunch, our lives moving along the expressway, when all of a sudden both lanes of traffic going east, stopped. There was only one road to get to our friends, and lunch, but we were in a great stuckness.

    Looking in the mirror, all I could see were cars sitting behind me. Ahead I could see two lanes of eastbound traffic sitting still, all the way to the bend where the road curved. What was the problem? What was beyond my vision?

   As the minutes ticked by, and the cars along with me inched forward, I did not know what we could do. "Just wait it out, I guess". Lunch was up there somewhere, but it was unknown to us at the time.

   Those disciples, if they ventured out of the house on that Sabbath, could see others going about their day, just as we could see cars heading west on that road, going about their business. They were not stuck.

   As we sat there, I'm sure there were people wondering about their shrinking gas supply. Were they scared? Were the disciples scared of what might happen to them on the morrow? Their hope gauge was sitting on E.

   We could see cars making U-turns, heading back to their lives before the jam, and giving up on their plan to get to the beach. Did some of the disciples think about that?

   Our problem was temporary, the traffic eventually moved, and we got to our destination. God was in control through it all.

   He was in control way back then on that first Easter weekend, too, but, to those followers of that Rabbi, Jesus, those hours between that dark Friday and that eye-opening Sunday must have been long and hard.

   They were in "a great stuckness".

   And we, like them, can joyfully say:

   "Thank God for Sunday"