There are certain branches to Christianity that tell you that the Christian life is always victorious. What they often mean by that is there will be no suffering, no illness, no failure. Glory to glory, as the saying goes. No room in this scheme of things for depression, gloom, sadness, sickness, defeat.

Of all the days in the Easter calendar, today is the most forgotten; it is the day between. Good Friday we pause and remember the cross and Easter Sunday we celebrate with joy the resurrection but Saturday….well we’re not quite sure what to think about that.

It reminds me that there are days when victory doesn’t seem close (even though it is), that God doesn’t seem all-good or all-powerful (even though He is), that the sun won’t shine and I may not laugh again (even though it will and I will). Today the tomb is not empty, today Jesus is dead, today the soldiers still stand outside the tomb and the Jesus movement has come to a crashing and crushing stop.

Some days that’s just the way it is and to pretend otherwise would be foolish at best. My loved one is sick, my child rebellious and sinful, my circumstances difficult and unmoving, my church unhelpful, my soul dull and lifeless. Sometimes that’s just the way it is.

The Christian hope in the here and now is not that every day the sun will shine or that I will become rich, my house a mansion and my life perfect (although one day it will be), but that in the here and now whatever happens God is good, is almighty, is here and that in the day of mourning there is comfort, in the day of sorrow there is peace, in the day of darkness there is hope that the light will shine again.

We live in the hope that even though we die, death will be defeated, we live in the hope that the pain of this life will pass away and all things will be made new.