In the Meantime<\/h2>\n
We will face disappointment in our life of prayer. But don\u2019t lose heart. Don\u2019t give up. God knows and sympathizes with our struggle. He hears and is acting even now upon our pleas, often in unexpected ways. And not a single prayer for his glory and the world\u2019s good will fall to earth utterly fruitless. Such prayers always arise as sweet incense to him. He is storing them up for the day of unimaginable glory and goodness, which is our sure hope in Christ. So, in the meantime . . . <\/p>\n
The trouble is with this \u201cin the meantime,\u201d the time of so many seemingly unanswered prayers. It is important, then, to add a point having to do with Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That there is such a thing as Holy Saturday in the gospel is remarkable, if oft overlooked. Why wouldn\u2019t a simple movement from death one day to resurrection the next be sufficient? Why put a whole day, and a day of \u201crest\u201d and inactivity at that, between cross and resurrection? Why might it be crucial to come to terms with not only the substance of the doctrines that we associate with Holy Week but also the three-day shape of the drama<\/em> at its climax? A theology of Holy Saturday is of crucial importance for many things,1<\/sup> including sustained faithful, fervent prayer.<\/p>\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n Daniel J. Brendsel<\/a><\/p>\n <\/em> In this encouraging and practical book, readers will gain a new perspective on prayer and learn to answer what God has already spoken\u2014drawing them into a deeper relationship with the Trinity.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Let us imagine ourselves in the shoes of the first disciples on that Sabbath between cross and resurrection. What would that day have been like?<\/p>\n Try putting that in your telling of the gospel! Amazingly, written into the God-inspired gospel climax is a day of ambiguity, of the kings of the world still apparently ruling the day, of the fear and uncertainty of God\u2019s people, of the seeming victory of death, of the silence of God. The canonical telling of the one and only \u201cgood news\u201d is a telling that does not avoid Holy Saturday. This is part of the divine author\u2019s message, part of his inscrutably wise ways in the world. <\/p>\n It turns out that God not only expects<\/em> the life of prayer to traverse seasons of weariness but even writes such seasons into the heart of the story<\/em>. The sovereign God grants his disciples such experiences. We may rightly assume that they are intended in some way for his people\u2019s good. Again, that helps us, a little\u2014not as an immunization against anguish in the face of good prayers long left unanswered, but as a reassurance that such experiences are not pointless but part of a drama with good ends and final beauty and peace. <\/p>\n Looking intently at Holy Saturday from our vantage point, we discern nothing short of good news.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So if we suffer seasons individually and corporately wherein the life of prayer feels like a one-sided dialogue, this isn\u2019t necessarily a result of our unbelief and sin. It\u2019s not an occasion for wallowing in introspective self-pity, as if our moral defects were always to blame. It isn\u2019t an indication that we are outlier Christians. It\u2019s not evidence that we are outside God\u2019s will or attention. And it most assuredly isn\u2019t a sign that things are ultimately spinning chaotically out of control. Susceptibility to weariness in prayer and experiences of the silence of God are, strange as it may sound, part of God-given normal life in Christ in the time between his first and second comings. The church age is, we might say, a Holy Saturday age: an already-and-not-yet \u201cday\u201d in between, an \u201cas sorrowful yet always rejoicing\u201d sojourn, an epoch during which ambiguity, confusion, unresolved tensions, and weeping go hand in hand with humble, bold, joyful confidence in God\u2019s sure promises. <\/p>\n But a theology of Holy Saturday opens the door to more than just a little<\/em> help in our experiences of the silence of God. Looking intently at Holy Saturday from our vantage point, we discern nothing short of good news. On Holy Saturday, the disciples are suffering the apparent silence of God, but Jesus is dead. How is that good news? He\u2019s dead and buried on Holy Saturday because he himself has already gone through it all on Good Friday\u2014anguish, loneliness, failure, rejection, abuse, silence from God. In fact, the silence from God that Jesus underwent was not just strong and intense like ours; his was absolute, which ours is not. And the good news is this: Jesus underwent this ultimate nightmare for us, in our place, for the life of the world. Jesus suffered God\u2019s silence not just like us<\/em> but also and fundamentally for us<\/em> sinners. <\/p>\n As a result, we can have full assurance of faith that though we may often meet with God\u2019s hiddenness and silence, it is not absolute for us. God\u2019s sometime silence toward us his praying people, being only a hint of the absolute silence endured by God incarnate on our behalf, can be received from God as a strange, severe mercy for our good. What\u2019s more, we can also have great confidence that Jesus (who is no longer dead but lives) sympathizes with our plight and can even be present with us through it. Since Jesus has plumbed the utter depths, there is no depth or darkness that we can fall into where Jesus might not also be found. <\/p>\n In the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar, \u201cHe wanted to sink so low that in the future all falling would be a falling into him.\u201d3<\/sup> When life seems a living hell and our cries receive the seeming silent treatment, we can know that God himself has gone there first and thus can be found even there.<\/p>\n \n Notes:<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n This article is adapted from<\/em> Answering Speech: The Life of Prayer as Response to God<\/a> by Daniel J. Brendsel.<\/em><\/p>\n ![\"Answering](\"https:\/\/static.crossway.org\/studio-files\/media\/114e8a08ac524051ed4bf16a0cc7edf21f533c9f.jpg\")
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A Day of Ambiguity<\/h2>\n
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