Silent Saturday

sandwiched between the Day that is Good
and the Day that is Holy
is the one that is Silent

how did Jesus' disciples spend
this Silent Saturday?

did they wonder what they could have done?
should have done?
did they remember Jesus' words differently
in this new darkness?
did they remember His words of hope
or did the grief obscure what should have
made their hearts expectant?

should they have
        spoken up?
        fought off soldiers?
        stuck beside Him all the way?
        taken Judas out long ago?

Judas—
did they blame him more than they should have
because blaming themselves hurt too much?

what does one do on a day
when Light has died
when Life has died
and you don't have the expectation
or the hope
that He will rise tomorrow?

you wait.
you try to remember all the things
that you saw and heard when the Light shone brightly
some vital instruction
something that will help make sense
of the senseless

for those of us
on the other side of Easter
it is easy to overlook this day
this silence
this day after

because we know
it is also the day before

        before the stone is rolled away
        before hope rises
        before an empty tomb
        before a walk with a Stranger

but the Disciples did not
they were living it
in brutally real time

this makes me wonder...
all the things that today
cause us to despair
have strained our hope
turn our stomachs into knots of string
just by thinking about them
        sickness
        loneliness
        cancer
        injustice
        war
        death

i wonder
if we knew that Jesus would rise in
        our despair
        our hopelessness
tomorrow
what we would do with today?