“Easter’s coming,” I whispered on Good Friday as we left the church in silence and darkness. Soon my social media feeds will post assurances that Easter is coming—a hope-filled reminder that darkness and death are not the last word.

Jesus’ first followers didn’t have the luxury of bypassing Saturday. By the time Saturday dawned, this Easter story of ours had been marred by betrayal, bitter tears, despair, a Savior who could but didn’t come down from the cross to save himself, and followers who watched him breathe his last. We have Joseph of Arimathea who went to work quickly and secretly to take away Jesus’ body, which he and Nicodemus wrapped in linen cloths with spices, not with resurrection in mind, but because of the Jewish day of preparation.

For some of us, the solemnity of Good Friday quickly gives way on Saturday to Easter’s triumphant song, that “Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia! Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!” For most all of us, Saturday is the day we spend getting ready for Resurrection Day in one way or another.

But for some, ours is still the cross and grave. We relate more to loss, bitter tears and fear than we do to hope and joy. We sit in Saturday’s darkness, painfully aware of its suffocating silence and uncertainty. For me, it’s the uncertainty that creates low expectations that nothing will change for a sick family member. Am I am going to be perpetually stuck in this bleak in-between day of Easter?

On this in-between day, women who had followed Jesus now trailed Joseph of Arimathea to the tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary watched him lay Jesus’ body just so and then roll a great stone to its entrance and leave. Matthew 27:61 describe the two Marys sitting there opposite the tomb, sitting through the shock and grief of Saturday. Eventually, they went home to prepare spices and ointment to take to the tomb the next morning and lovingly attend to Jesus' corpse.

How confusing those moments must have been when the tomb was empty. There was no body to tend. The costly jar had been broken, tears had already washed his feet and they were nowhere to be found.

I would like to think that at some point, the burial spices and ointment went every which way when they saw an angel of the Lord sitting on the stone they were sure Joseph had rolled to the tomb's entrance. Instead of a body to tend, they were greeted with the news that the lifeless body no longer existed. Death and loss were gone. "He is not here, for he has risen as he said. Come, see the place where he lay." (Matthew 28:6) Saturday's shock and grief gave way to Easter as the Risen Savior greeted them.

Perhaps Saturday’s expectation isn’t that Easter’s coming, but that the sunrise has visited us from on high “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79) That darkness isn’t darkness to God, and that night we’re sitting in is as bright as day, that fear and joy and hope are part of Easter expectations, and we can look for a return visit from on high.

As kids, my sisters and I dubbed any large grey clouds with shafts of sunlight beaming through them “Second Coming Clouds.” Actually, these are Crepuscular rays—“God rays”—sunbeams that originate when the sun is just below the horizon, during twilight hours. These God rays are “noticeable when the contrast between light and dark is most obvious,” like between Easter Saturday and Easter morning.

Today, for all who sit in the darkness, ours is the cross, the grave, the skies.

Alleluia.