A Black Sabbath Made White as Snow

Today is Holy Saturday, also known as Black Sabbath - the darkest sabbath of the year. Jesus was placed in a tomb Friday evening, thus he was entombed the whole sabbath day, God in Jesus tasted death...rather death consumed him and bound him in cloth and laid his still body on cold stone. The Son of Light saw none in that dark cavern on Black Sabbath.

So today, as I meditated on the event (or non-event) of this day, I watched with dismay as snow fell softly - sometimes furiously - to the ground. Snowing on Easter Eve...it just didn't seem right. But Jesus dead in a tomb doesn't seem right either. And as the snow fell, making our world white...I obviously thought of how the blood of Jesus can cleanse us from our sins and make us white and pure as snow.

To be honest, I was quite irritated with the snow. It is supposed to be sunny and warm, my tulips and daffodils are supposed to be blooming soon. I planted a Bleeding Heart earlier in the week, and now it is wilted and frozen to death. Stupid freezing weather. But my irritation sooned turned to meditation as I sought to redeem the uncharacteristic weather: Jesus' heart was cold on this day as well, and his bleeding heart eventually ceased, as if frozen to death.

And so I wait. If I wait as a character in that first story, I wait with no end in sight. The end has already come and gone: Jesus is dead and God is further away then possibly imagined. There is no hope anymore. Let winter reign for a hundred years. It is a cold, bleak sabbath - with a kind of resting from which one does not get up from again.

But it uncharacteristically snowed, and so there is faint hope that God will uncharacteristically show us a miracle: it is spring...new life will emerge. All that was dead and dirty is made white as snow...and the melting provides the moistness out of which tulips and daffodils can break forth from under the frozen crust. Today was a bleak, black sabbath made white as snow...a foretaste of how Jesus will cover over my darkness and bring forth a spring full of redeemed beauty.

Come, Lord Jesus...