“O God, you enlightened this most holy night with the glory of the Lord’s resurrection. Preserve the spirit of adoption which you have given to all your people, so that renewed in body and soul, we may serve you in all purity; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”

As much as I have been learning about the season of Lent leading up to Easter and the holy week including Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, I haven’t really found out much about Holy Saturday, also referred to as Easter Eve. No one really seems to commemorate the day.

Maybe it’s because nothing really happened. It’s the day between the Good Friday of Jesus laying down His life and the Easter Sunday of Jesus being raised up from the dead. I know there’s a passage in 1 Peter 3:19 about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison. Some believe that Jesus descended into hell and proclaimed His victory to the spirits there. Some believe it was Jesus preaching through Noah to those before the flood came. I’m not sure what I believe.

I do imagine that feeling of hopelessness the disciples must have felt on that Saturday. All their hopes seem to have died on the cross with Jesus. They couldn’t quite grasp what He was talking about when He said He must be handed over and lifted up and killed to rise again. They had seen their Rabbi whom they had followed and been with every single day for three years die. They had no where to go.

But thankfully, the story doesn’t end with Saturday. The story doesn’t end with the sealed tomb and sorrowful hearts and sad faces. I heard that because of Easter Sunday, the worst thing is never the last thing. Because of Easter Sunday, your story will not end with ashes, to paraphrase Elisabeth Elliott.

It may be Friday (or in this case Holy Saturday), but Sunday’s comin’!