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The day after is different from the day of.
The day something falls apart is usually loud. There are people around. Decisions to make. Adrenaline — even if it’s terrible, at least something is happening.
The day after is quiet. And quiet is worse.
Because in the quiet, you have nothing to do but sit with what just happened — and wonder what, if anything, comes next.
That’s exactly where the disciples were on the day we now call Holy Saturday.
The Day Nobody Preaches About
Good Friday had happened. Jesus was dead. The tomb was sealed.
And then — as Luke’s gospel records it, almost matter-of-factly — “On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.” (Luke 23:56)
That is an extraordinary sentence.
Their teacher. Their friend. The one they had followed and watched and given their lives to — was in a sealed tomb. And they… rested? Not because they had peace. Because the Sabbath said to. Because there was nothing else to do. The commandment came, the sun went down, and all they could do was sit in the silence.
They didn’t call it Holy Saturday. That name came later — from people who already knew how the story ended. To the disciples, it wasn’t holy. It was just Saturday. The longest, emptiest day of their lives. No angel. No sign from heaven. No prophecy fulfilling itself in front of them.
Just silence.
What the Disciples Didn’t Know
Here’s the thing nobody talks about on that Saturday: God was not uninvolved.
The Resurrection was already in motion. Something was happening in that tomb — something that would change everything. But from where the disciples stood, sealed off in the quiet of that Sabbath, there was no evidence of it. Nothing was visibly moving. Everything looked like it was over.
About 600 years before Holy Saturday, a prophet named Jeremiah watched Jerusalem fall. He sat in the ruins of everything he’d spent his life building, with nothing left but wreckage around him. And from that place — from his own sealed-off, silent, impossible Saturday — he wrote something remarkable:
“It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” — Lamentations 3:26
Quietly. Not desperately. Not frantically. Quietly.
Not because waiting is easy. But because Jeremiah had learned, through extraordinary pain, that the silence was not the story. That what he could see was not the whole picture. That what looked like an ending was still, somehow, in God’s hands.
You can read about the Hebrew meaning of “wait on the Lord” — it carries an active, expectant quality that English loses. But what Lamentations captures is quieter. It’s sitting in the rubble and choosing to believe that silence doesn’t mean the end.
Are You in a Holy Saturday Season?
Let me ask you something directly:
Are you in a Holy Saturday right now?
Not Good Friday — that was the crisis. The diagnosis. The end of the marriage. The door that closed. Good Friday already happened.
And it’s not Easter yet. There’s no resolution. No angel at the tomb. No voice from heaven telling you Sunday is coming.
You’re in the in-between.
The not-yet.
The day after everything fell apart, when nothing new has started — and you have no information about whether anything ever will.
That’s Holy Saturday. And almost nobody preaches about it, because it’s uncomfortable to sit with a day when God seems to be doing nothing. But most of the hardest seasons in life aren’t Good Friday or Easter. They’re Holy Saturday. The quiet stretch where the silence goes on so long you start to wonder if it means something.
It doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The disciples had no information about Sunday. They couldn’t see the Resurrection happening. They couldn’t feel it or track it or confirm it. But it was happening. The silence wasn’t evidence of absence. It was the sound of something being prepared that human eyes couldn’t yet see.
If you’ve been in a season where God feels far away, you are not standing somewhere the disciples haven’t stood.
What Holy Saturday Means for You Today
You don’t need Sunday to be here yet to trust that it’s coming.
Waiting is not the same as being forgotten. Silence is not the same as absence. The sealed tomb looked like the end from the outside. From the inside, it was the beginning.
If you’re in the in-between right now — if you’re carrying a season where nothing is happening and nobody is telling you what comes next — you are not stuck. You are between chapters.
And the author of your story is not done writing.
If the silence hits hardest at night — if it’s 2am and the thoughts won’t stop cycling through what happened and what might happen next — there’s a free guide worth your time: Why Your Mind Won’t Slow Down at Night. It was written for exactly the person lying awake in a Holy Saturday season.
Three Things to Do Right Now
- Name your season out loud. Say it — or write it — in plain words: “I’m in the in-between. This is Holy Saturday for me. It is not the end.” Naming a season changes how you hold it. It moves it from something happening to you into something you’re moving through.
- Read Lamentations 3:19-26 slowly — all eight verses. Jeremiah wrote this in the ruins of Jerusalem. Read it as someone who already knew the feeling you’re carrying, and notice what he lands on in verse 26.
- If the silence hits hardest tonight: open the prayer for when you can’t sleep and read it out loud. Not to perform anything — just to say something true in the dark.
Questions Worth Writing About
- What does your Holy Saturday look like right now? What is the thing you’re waiting on that hasn’t arrived yet?
- When God is silent in a hard season, what does that silence make you believe about yourself? What story are you telling from the absence?
- Is there something in you that already knows Sunday is still possible — even if nothing in your circumstances confirms it yet? What is that thing, and what would it take to hold onto it?
A Prayer for the In-Between
Lord, I’m in the in-between right now, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t feel like an ending. I don’t have evidence that anything is happening. I’m just sitting here with my questions and the silence. I don’t need an answer today. I just need to know the silence isn’t the story — that the not-yet doesn’t mean never. Help me hold onto that. Amen.
Something to Think About
Which do you think is actually harder to live through — Good Friday, when everything falls apart at once, or Holy Saturday, the day after, when nothing is happening and you have no information about what comes next? I’d love to hear your take in the comments.
Share This If It Helped
- “The disciples didn’t know it was ‘Holy Saturday.’ They just knew it was the day after everything. No angel. No sign. No information about what comes next. If you’re in that in-between right now — you are not alone.” [link]
- “Silence doesn’t mean absence. The not-yet doesn’t mean never. Most of the hardest seasons in life aren’t Good Friday or Easter — they’re Holy Saturday. This is for anyone living in one.” [link]
- “Holy Saturday: the day nobody preaches about. But it might be where you are right now.” [link]
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Holy Saturday?
Holy Saturday is the day between Good Friday (the crucifixion of Jesus) and Easter Sunday (the Resurrection). For the disciples, there was no name for it — it was simply the worst day of their lives. The tomb was sealed, Jesus was gone, and nobody had told them what would happen next. The name “Holy Saturday” came later, from people who already knew how the story ended. In Christian tradition, it represents the in-between — the season of waiting after the crisis and before the resolution.
Why is Holy Saturday so hard to talk about in church?
Most Christian teaching focuses on Good Friday (the suffering and sacrifice) or Easter Sunday (the Resurrection and victory). Holy Saturday is uncomfortable because it’s the day when nothing visible is happening — no miracle, no sign, no clear evidence of God at work. Preaching about a day when God seems silent doesn’t fit neatly into most faith narratives. But it’s the day that most accurately describes where many people actually live — in the in-between, waiting for a Sunday that hasn’t arrived yet.
What does it mean to be in a Holy Saturday season?
A Holy Saturday season is the period between a crisis and its resolution — when the hard thing has already happened, but the healing, answer, or breakthrough hasn’t come yet. It’s the person waiting on a diagnosis, grieving a loss that hasn’t fully processed, carrying a marriage that’s broken but not healed, or simply sitting in silence wondering if God is still there. It’s the in-between space where waiting is the only available action.
What does the Bible say about waiting in silence?
Lamentations 3:26 says, “It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” The prophet Jeremiah wrote this while sitting in the ruins of Jerusalem — in the most complete devastation of his life. His conclusion, from that place, was that quiet waiting was not passive resignation but active trust. Scripture doesn’t promise that the waiting will be short. It promises that the one you’re waiting on is not absent.
How do I get through a Holy Saturday season without losing faith?
The disciples got through Holy Saturday without doing anything heroic. They rested because the Sabbath commanded it. They waited because there was nothing else to do. And Sunday came — not because of anything they did to make it happen. The encouragement of Holy Saturday is this: your job in the in-between is not to manufacture the ending. It’s to stay present, stay honest with God about how hard the silence is, and trust that something is being prepared that you can’t yet see. The Resurrection didn’t require the disciples’ participation to be real.
