Liminality, Part 2: The Saturday Between

Holding On When Everything Has Fallen Apart

(If you missed Part 1, “Liminality: When the Stage Ends and the Story Isn’t Finished,” you can read it HERE.)

The drama of Holy Week moves most of us between two extremes: the grief of Good Friday and the joy of Resurrection Sunday. These days mark the most important moments in the Christian calendar, and though they may feel opposite, they both shape our understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. On Friday, the blameless Lamb of God paid it all (1 Pt 1:19). On Sunday, the Conquering Lion secured our eternal future by defeating death itself (Rev 5:5).

We’ve grown accustomed to commemorating these extremes. We gather at Friday evening vigils around crosses and communion tables. On Sunday, we shout hallelujahs at sunrise services and maybe even sneak in that 1988 song Celebrate Jesus by Bishop Gary Oliver. We preach Christ crucified and then proclaim the empty tomb without skipping a beat.

But in between those two days is a quieter one, overshadowed by sorrow and celebration. A day often left unspoken:

Saturday.

This particular Saturday is known as Holy Saturday. It is the day Jesus remained in the tomb. It’s also the day that most mirrors the reality of how many of us actually live. Not in the acute pain of sudden loss nor in the victorious clarity of resurrection, but in the confusion between what has died and what has not yet come to life. If you find yourself in that space, your very own Holy Saturday—you are not alone.

The Gospels describe that after His crucifixion, Jesus was placed in a borrowed tomb where His body remained throughout that quiet Saturday (Mt 27:59–60; Mk 15:46; Lk 23:53–54; Jn 19:39–42). It was the Sabbath, so according to Jewish law, no work could be done. Not even the anointing of a body. Although the women who had followed Jesus prepared their spices and ointments, they had to wait.

It’s one of the most haunting images in Scripture: grief-stricken women, eager to honor their deceased Rabbi, forced into stillness. Their act of obedience required them to pause in the very moment when they most longed to do something. The same God who asked them to love their neighbors and enemies had also, long ago, commanded them to cease from striving on sabbath.

That tension between what we long to do and what we’re asked to surrender is the tension of liminality… and of Holy Saturday.

My Holy Saturday

It was Holy Saturday, 2024, when I ascended a familiar place for the last time. I intended to be alone that day, singing love songs to Jesus and pouring out my oil, so to speak, one last time from that stage. I was grateful when a dear friend joined me on keys and another sat in the sound booth, even though our last set as a team had been the day before—Good Friday 2024.

I poured out final melodies and spontaneous songs, surrendering the whole saga to the Lord—declaring truths about His holiness and His justice, asking that He would allow me to be found in His house wherever He might lead. As I began to tear down at the end of my set, I paused, staring at the Guitar 1 spot where I had first ministered in April 2009. Though I hadn’t stewarded that stage continuously for 15 years, It was still very central to all that I did during that time. I scanned the whole stage, remembering my friends over the years who once shared in sweet fellowship while singing the Scriptures. I remembered the melodies, the spontaneous moments, the delight we had in the Lord, and the conviction followed by sweet resolutions to live holy. And I knew—nothing would ever be the same once I walked out of that room.

I froze, not wanting to let it go, but also knowing I wasn’t called nor invited to help steer the direction of this movement. What once had been a red-hot center and unifying force in the global praying and singing church was reforming into an insular, modern-day monastery. The community we had left our hometowns for and poured ourselves into had changed.

All that was left was either the pressure to “shut it down” due to the darkness that was exposed, or to stay faithful to “the mandate” in pursuit of holding on to what was good. But many of us couldn’t join either polarity.

On one hand, we were daily participating in genuinely good things, and we couldn’t subscribe to the most extreme narrative—that our worship was nothing more than noisy gongs, or that everyone who continued to pray and worship from that place was just a brainwashed follower, blindly trapped in cultish delusion. On the other hand, some of us weren’t willing to keep the machine running if it meant bypassing love, integrity, or each other. Our loyalty was never to a logo. It was to Jesus—and to the kind of unity He prayed for in John 17.

I really thought we were all in this together. It wasn’t just personal grief—it was communal disorientation. It was watching something you helped build begin to fracture and not knowing how, or if, it could—would—or should be restored. And in that agony, I’ve come to see how deeply human it is to not know what comes next.

So I ended with gratitude for 15 years since I first came to Kansas City to serve in a community devoted to prayer. I invited my entire worship team and their children to our home for a final team party. What moved me most about our gathering wasn’t the memories we shared or even the food we ate—it was watching all the kids play until dark on the zip line, the gorilla line, and the big tree swing. Somehow, it made me feel like there was still a future for all of us… however blurry it appeared.

It was my Holy Saturday.

When the House Fell Apart

Over the past year, many of us have lived in this disorienting space—where former roles, relationships, and rhythms ended, and new ones have been awkward or have still not taken shape. Maybe you suffered this alone most of the time, so did we. We witnessed a communal crisis unfold where the ‘uncles,’ once unified in ministry, could not agree on how to discipline a spiritual father. A proverbial bomb went off in grandpa’s office—set to confront injustice but with shockwaves that tore through lives, homes, and hearts. Perhaps that wasn’t the intent, but it’s what happened. Many of us were left reeling, unaware of the storm that had been brewing for months. The back and forth created something like a war zone. Shrapnel hit our kids. Homes were rattled. Livelihoods were lost. Sincere devotion was tarnished. It was all we could do to tend to the collateral damage while raw with pain and desperate for answers.

Some of the cousins started throwing punches. Some fled. Others, like me, tried to preserve the family heirloom from the wreckage—that sacred room, now marred by the profane. It was a family feud born of real pain, horribly played out in public, where a once-inspired world now questioned whether the ‘fire on the altar’ had been holy—or strange fire—all along.

Like a humanitarian crisis, there were powers contending at the top, warriors rallying for one side or another, onlookers casually sneering, and in the land below: refugees who fled, defenders who protested the destruction of their space, and the internally displaced—those who no longer felt at home yet haven’t left the area. I suppose I was the latter two. Now, just the latter.

And within all of this—so often depersonalized in the noise—were the most misunderstood of all: those who had suffered long before this became a communal crisis. They became something no one aspires to be: victims. Victims who should have been in an objectively safe environment for everyone, not just for most of us.

When their courage grew, they felt to do what they could to prevent others from being harmed. But in a fractured community, not everyone could understand. Some, having lived a different version of the same environment, understandably struggled to believe the claims or questioned their accuracy. In an imperfect world, justice for some can destabilize the reality of others who never experienced the same harm. And while the full truth continues to unfold, one thing is clear: the ache and the trauma are real—for both the named and unnamed, for those who claim victimhood and those who deny it entirely.

There were so many times I had it wrong over these past 18 months. We just couldn’t choose sides when we knew so little. It wasn’t that simple. It felt like standing where Joshua once stood—facing the Captain of the Lord’s Army, only to realize God wasn’t choosing sides. The real question was: are we on the Lord’s side? And how we answered that... is what divided us (Joshua 5:13–14).

Maybe that’s why I’ve come to resonate so deeply with the silence of those early disciples. None of them got it right. All had abandoned Jesus when it mattered most. Some hid in fear. One denied Him outright—crumbling under pressure before the words even left the mouth of a young girl. Others wept in confusion, disoriented by the events they thought they understood. Even the betrayer regretted taking the money, only to be left in torment by the consequences of his choice.

And while we weren’t grieving the death of our perfect Messiah, we were grieving the loss of a spiritual father—one who caused real harm and has yet to show the fruits of repentance which plays out in the one-anothers not just in the personal conviction of feeling forgiven. We were grieving the dignity of a unified community, once bound together by a shared longing to see Jesus glorified in our generation. We lost our clarity of purpose. Sure, there might still be new ways forward. But everything we thought was... just wasn’t anymore.

And maybe that’s why, when everything falls apart and every version of the story feels both true and incomplete, some don’t take sides—instead we retreat. We grieve. We question. We try to breathe.

On Saturday.

That’s what the first Holy Saturday must have felt like. The disciples had scattered each likely carrying their own version of where it all went wrong (Mark 14:50). The women were grieving the loss of Jesus, the kindest man who gave them an equal seat at the table. The original Jesus movement was over, so it seemed. There were no worship songs, no “Sunday’s coming” Instagram posts, just utter shock. Questions, hiding, fear. John 20:19 tells us they were behind locked doors, afraid of being arrested next. They weren’t preparing for a miracle. They were mourning a failure.

And yet, something else was happening too.

Matthew 27:62–66 tells us that on that very Sabbath, while the disciples hid, the religious elite went to Pilate. They remembered Jesus said He’d rise. So, they placed guards at the tomb to prevent what even the disciples weren’t expecting. In a strange twist, the enemies of Jesus were more active on Saturday than His followers. So if you’ve felt stuck like the disciples with all the questions… it’s ok… me too.

This reminds me of something I keep coming back to: just because we feel like nothing is happening doesn’t mean God isn’t working. Resurrection was already set in motion. The plan was unfolding. Heaven wasn’t worried; in fact, this was the wisdom of God. But from earth’s vantage point, everything felt still, or worse, it felt over. That’s the unsettling beauty of Holy Saturday. It is a reminder that God’s silence is not His absence. And it teaches us to wait when we’d rather be doing anything else, like changing the world through worship and prayer, or hunting for the next scandal to prove that our perspectives were right. But the invitation is deeper: to wait in the unresolved.

Living with Questions

Vaneetha Risner calls Holy Saturday a “day of desolation,” a time when regret, shame, and second-guessing rise to the surface.¹ You wonder what was true, what you missed, or if any of it even mattered. And if you’re like me, you also start asking harder questions: Why didn’t God intervene sooner? Why wait so long—long enough for more people to be affected? Why did He let us hope in those wild moments of breakthrough if this was how it would all end? Why does God anoint deeply broken people? Or does He?

Holy Saturday is not the day to answer those questions. It’s the day we learn how to sit with them—without rushing, without fixing, without pretending. A day that reminds us grief is not rebellion. And that trusting God doesn’t require fully understanding Him.

Some of us are still standing at the tomb, holding the spices we never got to use. Some of us are hiding behind locked doors, trying to process the betrayal and confusion. Some of us are quietly wondering whether what we gave our lives to even mattered. And yet, somehow, this too is holy. Liminality—the in-between—is not a failure of faith. It’s often the proving ground of it.

Cally Logan reflects on the women who returned to the tomb at dawn, just after the Sabbath ended.² They had no idea what they would find. But they came. They showed up. And in doing so, they became the first witnesses of resurrection. That’s how breakthrough comes—not always with trumpets and angels, but sometimes with trembling hands, swollen eyes, and faithful footsteps in the dark.

There is no Resurrection Sunday without Holy Saturday. No new life without death. No resurrection without burial. And no formation without the holy pause. The temptation is to rush past the ache—to fix the story, to resolve the pain. But this Saturday teaches us a different kind of faith: the kind that waits in silence, honors what was, submits to what is, and trusts what may yet be.

We won’t stay in Holy Saturday forever. But we must learn to dwell here faithfully, until Sunday dawns. So if you’re in the middle of a story that hasn’t resolved yet—unsure how it ends—you’re not lost. You’re just in the Saturday between. And Jesus is with us here, too.

1. https://www.vaneetha.com/journal/the-waiting-and-desolation-of-holy-saturday

2. https://www.crosswalk.com/special-coverage/easter/what-happened-on-holy-saturday.html