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Psalms 130:5-6 “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

Think

You’ve never been in the dark like this. Not really.

Not the kind of dark where nothing is happening. Where nothing is moving. Where there’s no forward motion and no backward motion and no sideways motion at all. Just waiting. Just silence. Just the heavy, suffocating absence of anything that looks like progress.

The disciples didn’t have the Easter narrative yet. They didn’t know how the story ended. All they knew was that their rabbi was dead. The man they’d left everything to follow was gone. The future they’d built was erased. And there was nothing to do but wait in the silence.

Holy Saturday is the day we never talk about. We skip from Palm Sunday to Easter. We rush from Hosanna to Hallelujah. But there’s a day in between. The day when it was all over and it wasn’t all over. The day when everything was finished but nothing was finished yet.

This is the place where many of us actually live.

Think about it like this. It’s like the moment after bad news where you’re waiting for the follow-up appointment. The diagnosis has been delivered, but the treatment hasn’t started yet. You’re not where you were, but you’re not where you’re going. You’re in the in-between. And the in-between is where faith gets forged or faith gets abandoned.

The disciples were in the in-between. Jesus had told them he’d rise on the third day. But they didn’t really understand it. They thought everything was over. They thought the story had ended in tragedy.

This matters because you’re probably in a Saturday somewhere. Maybe you’re waiting for a healing that hasn’t come yet. Maybe you’re waiting for a relationship to be restored. Maybe you’re waiting for a door to open that’s been closed for months or years. Maybe you’re just waiting for things to make sense again.

And in the waiting, in the silence, in the not-knowing, faith gets tested. Not tested like a quiz where you fill in the right answers. Tested like metal in a furnace. Tested in the fire. Tested in ways that either refine you or reveal that there was never anything real there to begin with.

Did you notice the image in Psalm 130? Watchmen waiting for morning. Their whole job was to keep watch. To stay awake. To watch for the first light of dawn. They didn’t just glance toward the horizon. They waited. They focused. They concentrated all their attention on the coming of the light.

That’s the posture of faith. Not distraction. Not despair. Not giving up. But focused, intentional waiting.

Here’s where most of us fail in the waiting: we try to manufacture our own light. We get impatient with God’s timing, so we create our own solutions. We build our own fire instead of waiting for his dawn. But a fire you build yourself only lights a small circle around your feet. The dawn lights the whole world.

Think about it like this. It’s like a tree that was cut years ago. The wound is real. You can see the scar. But it keeps growing. It sends out new branches. It grows new rings around the injury. And the tree, even wounded, keeps reaching toward the sun.

That’s what faith in the dark is. Not pretending the darkness isn’t real. But not letting it convince you that the light won’t come.

Here’s the thing: the waiting is itself part of the work. God doesn’t just restore you in the breakthrough moment. He changes you in the waiting. He builds something in you while you’re watching for the morning. Patience. Trust. Dependence. The kind of character that can only be formed when everything else has been stripped away.

Because sometimes before you can be resurrected, you have to really die. Not just die to something. But die to your plan. Die to your timeline. Die to your understanding of how this should go. Die to the version of the story where you’re the author.

And then wait.

It’s been said that faith is trust in the character of God when his plan doesn’t make sense. It’s believing that he’s good when your circumstances suggest he’s not. It’s holding on when letting go would be easier.

The watchmen didn’t make the sun come up. They just kept watching. They positioned themselves. They stayed awake. They refused to give in to despair. And the sun rose. Every single time. Without fail. The sun rose.

Did you notice the psalmist says it twice? “More than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” The repetition isn’t an accident. It’s emphasis. It’s the psalmist saying: you don’t understand how deeply I’m waiting. This isn’t casual. This isn’t passive. This is everything I have, focused on the one thing I need.

That’s the kind of waiting God honors. Not the kind where you sit on the couch and hope something happens. The kind where you position your whole life toward him. Where your choices, your conversations, your priorities all say the same thing: I’m watching for the morning. I believe it’s coming. And I’m going to live like it’s coming even when I can’t see it yet.

Your resurrection is coming. The silence right now? It’s not the end. It’s the space between the old and the new. It’s holy ground, even though it doesn’t feel holy. And the God who was faithful on Friday and will be victorious on Sunday is present with you right now, on Saturday, in the silence.

Apply

Name the Holy Saturday you’re in. The waiting. The silence. The in-between. Don’t skip over it. Sit with it for one day. And then commit to one act of stubborn hope—something small that says, “I’m going to trust that the sun is coming,” even if you can’t see the horizon yet.

Pray

God, I don’t like the silence. I don’t like waiting. But you’re in the silence too, aren’t you? So I’m going to stop fighting it. I’m going to be a watchman. I’m going to wait for the morning. Give me strength to wait. Give me faith to believe. Even when I can’t see it yet. In Jesus’ name. Amen.