Waiting while we wrestle
With confusion, with questions,
With all of the doubts,
We remember the mystery of Jesus and the Cross,
And we learn to pick up our own cross and follow Him.
Our Lord's was a real body
Taken down from a tree;
A body with weight and form,
With flesh and bones and feeling.
One evening at dusk, a real evening,
The ones who knew Him -
The ones who walked with Him,
The ones who said they'd follow Him
To the ends of the earth but betrayed Him,
They took Him down from a cross
Where His lifeless body lay.
One so beloved,
So believed in,
So hoped in,
Now without breath or movement,
The holy body of Jesus, lay silent.
His death and silence
Brought a required time of waiting -
Making room for all of the questions,
All of the confusion, doubts and unbelief.
Missing their Messiah,
Daybreak found them still in the waiting
With time for mourning,
For hopes dashed and griefs bared.
And right there in the waiting,
The waiting that God had allowed -
Feeling the devastation, the fear,
Feeling let down,
Lived yet, the most glorious glimmer of hope.
'What was it again, that He'd said?'
They tried to piece it together
But the full picture just wouldn't form.
Not yet.
Yet, in the quiet working,
While they were still waiting,
Jesus stepped into the unseen realm
Into the darkest of night, freeing
Every lost soul who'd believe.
Victorious and working outside of time -
Within all the wondering,
Within the deep questioning,
Nothing was truly silent
There in the unseen realm.
His voice was shaking chasms
Bending across time and space. His eyes conveying a limitless love
To every lonely heart there ever was.
His feet walking over hell's tomb
Rendering it - defeated forever.
With keys in hand and eyes on fire,
Finally, came the fulness of time
Finally, the third day
Finally, His face
Revealing what their hearts had hoped to believe -
Within the mystery - God was victorious!
God's human body, now glorified,
Walked through the veil
To show the ones who loved Him
Where the nails, the crown, their sin
Had been laid.
They touched Him,
Marveled as the picture became more clear -
God had gone outside of their limits and understanding
And won the world for His kingdom to come.
What had happened in the waiting,
What had happened that they couldn't see?
So much.
So very much was accomplished on the tree -
A ripping of the curtain
God our Father now says, 'Come.'
The blood of Jesus began a work
That can never be undone.
So here - within our long days of waiting,
We remember His work - unseen.
We remember the Cross of Christ That took three full days to complete.
Our waiting makes time for mourning,
Time for questions, confusion and doubt.
But it also makes time for the greatest glimmer of hope
To take root, grow to faith, and come out.
