The Silence Between Friday and Sunday

There is a particular kind of silence that falls after a catastrophe. It’s the silence of a house after a bitter argument, the silence of a phone that never rings, the silence of a tomb sealed with a great stone. For the followers of Jesus, that Saturday between the cross and the empty tomb must have been the loudest silence they had ever known. Everything they had believed in, hoped for, and reordered their lives around was dead and buried. Their hope was sealed behind a rock, guarded by soldiers.

Perhaps you know that silence. You are living in a Saturday season. Friday’s tragedy is behind you, but Sunday’s triumph is nowhere in sight. You are in the in-between, where prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling and faith feels like a memory. This is the heart of suffering in faith—not the crisis itself, but the waiting that follows, the gnawing uncertainty of whether God has forgotten you. It’s in these hard seasons that the enemy whispers his most potent lie: that this pain is pointless. That this tomb is your final destination.

But look closer at the story of that first Good Friday. In the very moment of ultimate suffering, as Jesus yielded up the ghost, something tore. It wasn't just the sky that grew dark; the very fabric of the temple, the place of God's presence, was ripped in two. This was not a sign of abandonment, but of access. Even in the deepest darkness, God was signaling that death would not have the final word. He was already at work, turning a place of execution into a gateway to His presence.

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;— Matthew 27:51, KJV

Your Scars Become Your Story

One of the most difficult things to believe when you're hurting is that your pain could ever have a purpose. We just want it to be over. We want to move on, forget, and leave the wreckage behind. We see this exact impulse in the man from Gadara, who had been tormented by a legion of demons. After Jesus sets him free, his first instinct is to get in the boat with Jesus and go anywhere else. Who could blame him? He wanted to escape the place of his deepest shame and suffering.

But Jesus’ response is staggering. He doesn't let him come. Instead, He gives him an assignment that must have felt impossible: Go back. Go home to the people who saw you at your worst, who chained you up and ran from you. Go tell them what God has done. Jesus didn't just heal this man *from* his past; He redeemed his past *for* a purpose. The very thing that had been his prison became his platform. His scars became the credentials for his story. He was sent back not as a victim, but as a living, breathing miracle.

This is God’s purpose in pain. He is not interested in simply erasing your hard seasons. He intends to leverage them. He wants to take the broken pieces of your story and build a monument to His grace. The place you feel most disqualified is often the exact place God wants to anoint you. Your testimony isn't about how perfect you've been; it's about how powerful He is. He sends you back into your own story, not to relive the pain, but to rewrite the ending.

Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.— Mark 5:19, KJV

When Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Sometimes, the hardest seasons don't involve a dramatic tragedy but the slow, grinding pain of being misunderstood, overlooked, and dismissed—often by the very people who should know you best. We see this in the life of Jesus Himself. When He returned to His hometown of Nazareth, they couldn't see past the carpenter's son they grew up with. They were so familiar with his old story that they were offended by His new authority. Their unbelief was a wall that even the Son of God would not force His way through.

This is a unique and isolating form of suffering in faith. You know God is doing something new in you. You have felt His touch, heard His call, and are trying to walk in it. But the people around you keep trying to put you back in an old box. They remember who you were, not who you are becoming. Their skepticism can feel like a tombstone, heavy and suffocating. It can make you question if you really heard from God at all. If Jesus faced this, we must know that we will too.

Yet, even in this, God is at work. Jesus didn't stop His ministry because His hometown rejected Him. He simply moved on to where faith was present. He teaches us that our value and calling are not determined by the opinions of others. Your hard season of being overlooked is not a sign of God's disapproval; it may well be the training ground for your anointing. He is teaching you to anchor your identity in Him alone, so that when you speak, you speak with the authority He has given you, not one borrowed from the approval of men.

But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.— Matthew 13:57, KJV

That Saturday in the tomb felt like an eternity. But Sunday was coming. The same power that shook the earth and rolled the stone away is at work in your life right now. The angel’s words to the women at the tomb are God’s words to you in your despair: 'Fear not ye.' Your season of silence is not a season of absence. God is not wasting your pain; He is weighing it for glory. He is preparing to turn your tomb into a testimony, and your deepest wound into a well of wisdom for others. Hold on. Your Sunday is coming, and when it dawns, you will see that He was with you all along.