Holy Saturday
Scripture: Matthew
27:57-66
This week’s devotions
follow a different pattern. They will focus on Gospel accounts of the last week
of Jesus’ life. I encourage you to read each of the readings slowly, perhaps
out loud, and to meditate on Jesus’ love in his actions. The prayers offered
are from the early twentieth century and variations on them are still used in
worship.
Teaching
This short reading finds Jesus being buried by men who were
not his disciples. It also displays the cunning of the chief priests and
Pharisees, as they seek to thwart the disciples, who were too fearful to claim
Jesus’ body, in case they worked up the courage to steal the body and claim
Jesus had risen. In all, it all seems rather anticlimactic. A gasp and a sigh
at the end of days of turmoil and fear. But today Jesus rests in the tomb. The
clock is ticking, though. He won’t be there long.
Life
Holy Saturday is sometimes a strange day in the observation
of Holy Week. Good Friday is done, but Easter is not quite here yet. How do we
approach this day? Perhaps we should live it like every day, for every day we
wait with hope knowing that Jesus will return, even as the disciples
(unknowingly and without hope) waited for Easter morning. Rest and prepare to
celebrate in worship and with food and festivities. Tomorrow is a great and
holy day!
Prayer
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give Thee most humble
and hearty thanks that Thou has given Thine onlybegotten Son to bear our sins
and to make atonement for us on the cross; and we pray Thee, give us grace to
put our whole trust in the Thy redeeming love, and grant that our faith in Thee
may be strengthened, our souls comforted, and we be enabled to resist all the
assaults of sin. Protect us against the devices of the Evil One; and in all
temptations keep us by Thy Holy Spirit, and help us to walk according to Thy
Word, that, being guarded and defended by Thy mighty power, we may never depart
from Thy ways, and in the end be saved by Thy grace. Amen.[1]
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