It is 8:45 on Sunday night and while it is mostly done, I wouldn’t call my Easter sermon quite finished yet. The beautiful spring weather seems to have receded and one of my daughters and I changed into our fleece Christmas onesies from a few years ago to sleep in. I might even put the hood on.

I don’t know what my problem is. I found the Easter baskets about twenty minutes ago and am postponing the big Easter dinner until I have completed all my papers. There is no strawberry pie in the refrigerator. I am having trouble believing that Sunday is coming.

This is the thing that was once novel, but now you are instructed not to say on Good Friday. It is Friday today, but Sunday is coming! People point to this as a great example of the ways that the church in America is not good at grief, at suffering, at not glossing over people’s pain. And I suppose that maybe Sunday is coming, but today it is Saturday, and it just all feels so sad.

Someone I deeply respect is in a coma

Someone who I have been walking with still doesn’t have her happy ending

I still have papers due.

Our fellowship hall is still flooding.

It isn’t Sunday yet. We live in a Saturday world. Sometimes the weather changes and you end up in your Christmas pajamas the day before you slip on your new Easter flats. Things aren’t done or over. Things didn’t turn out the way we thought. We are still waiting.

Maybe thats okay. Maybe I will wake up tomorrow ready to celebrate our risen Lord. Maybe I will feel it in every inch of my being.

Or maybe I will wake up still sad, still waiting. Maybe it will take all 50 days of Easter for the reality of the resurrection to take hold. Maybe we live in a Saturday world. Maybe it is okay to believe in the resurrection and still feel sad, to write Easter sermons in Christmas onesies because it is cold outside. Maybe God redeems all this anyway.