Reflections for Holy Week – Holy Saturday 2020

The audio file of this reflection can be found at https://ucashford.podbean.com

Welcome.

This is the final reflection in this series for Holy Week.

The readings for today are various, with choices for the Old Testament passage and the Gospel:

 Job 14:1-14 or Lamentations 3:1-9 & 19-24; Psalm 31:1-4 & 15-16; 1 Peter 4:1-8 then either Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42.

You may wish to read all of them through at some point today, carefully, prayerfully, and see which words stand out for you, these may be those that God knows you need to hear today.

For this day, this ‘Holy Saturday’ is a day of waiting, of watching and hoping, a day of wondering and dwelling in the darkness, before the light and joy of the resurrection that is to come.

We’re often not very good at staying in these dark and uncomfortable, uncertain places; perhaps that’s why many of us find it hard to inhabit these days we are living in right now. Today’s readings speak to us of holding fast in the darkness, for light will come; remaining people of hope, for God will not abandon us. I think they also help us to know that we’re not the first people to feel despair and lament in our situations, God knows this too and still loves us, always!

 ‘My soul continually thinks of [my affliction and homelessness]

and is bowed down within me.

But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’

(Lamentations 3:20-23 NRSV amended)

 

A prayer:

O God, you hold us;

even when it feels like you are a million miles away

and we are in the deepest, darkest place.

You know our need of you, for you felt it in Jesus on the cross.

In these waiting, uncertain, anxious times – hold us like never before

and whisper gently to us, your eternal promise – that LIGHT WILL COME!  AMEN.

 

We share the Lord’s Prayer to close:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name;
thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.  Amen.