Tomorrow is Resurrection Day. It seems hard to imagine that here, looking out the window. Today is another “third-winter” day, one of those runs of winter-like weather that appears after a few “false Spring” days. Where I live we measure early Spring in terms of second and third winters, and hopefully not in terms of fourth winters.

The last few weeks here have been unseasonably cold, with snow, freezing fog, and grey skies. The inclination to anticipate sunny warm days and imagine the rivers and lakes clear of their covers of ice has been nipped in the bud several times. The vision of no more frost in the ground is fleeting at best. Instead, the sense seems more like resignation. Today, it is cold, gray, damp, with new snow covering the brown earth and the old snow of the previous two winters this year. No new life is showing anywhere.

What a good metaphor for the last full day in the tomb for Jesus.

The final weeks of the life of Jesus incarnated as one of us must have seemed much the same. Instead of cold temperatures, there was the growing gloom of opposition and the cold, hard hearts of the religionists of the day. Religionists are always that way.

The messianic fervor that was to carry Jesus to a throne was dissipating. People were deserting Jesus because they were unwilling to pay the price of devotion and surrender required to be a true disciple. “From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.”

Even Jesus seemed to have a sense of resignation in what appeared to be a gathering darkness and gloom. “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death.”

His disciples seemed to be resigned to what they saw as defeat as well. “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

I am sure the grand entry into Jerusalem ignited a brief sense of hope in the midst of the gathering gloom. It reminds me of the two or three days above freezing we had over the last three weeks here in the northern plains. For us, our hopes were blown away by the blizzard this week.

For the disciples of Jesus, it was blown away by three days of growing conflict with the religionists. Sunday’s parade is barely over when Jesus goes into the temple and throws out the religious profiteers. Violently throws them out.

Then, for the next few days, Jesus verbally assaults the power centers of the religionists and alienates the masses. By Tuesday, the victory of Sunday had dissipated, replaced by the darkness of evil opposition. Imagine the chill of discouragement and the cold of fear that was growing in the disciples.

Then comes the unthinkable. Betrayal. Arrest. Torture. Panicked denial and abandonment. Crucifixion. The hasty burial to beat the Passover Sabbath. The cold silence that followed, two days of nothing. No Jesus. No Messiah. No hope. No expectation of victory.

Saturday, the regular Sabbath day, is the third day. The followers who had stayed with Jesus until the garden and the women who had stayed with Him to the end can only wait in the quiet with their thoughts. Sorrow, weeping, fear, and crushing disappointment must have been heavy in the Sabbath silence.

If they had only listened. You know, listened with faith and trust. Had they done so, perhaps they would have been waiting in anxious anticipation of whatever miracle their God was going to bring.

Imagine their voices in light of such anticipation; “He said three days. Today is the third day! What do you think the Lord God is going to do this time?”

Imagine the difference a true, spirit-empowered faith would have brought to that Saturday before Resurrection Day. They would not have needed to know the miracle if they had known well their God.

They were not there yet, but they would get to this kind of faith soon. It would come with the indwelling Holy Spirit. Then they would see such situations with a holy faith and anticipation.

The weather service is telling us that tomorrow will be bright, sunny, and above freezing. It seems hard to believe on this cold, chilly Saturday before Resurrection Day. I guess in this matter of the weather, I show how much I am like the disciples.

How easy it is to look at the situations we are in and to forget the promises or the faithfulness of our God. We see with our own eyes, not the eyes of faith. We perceive with our own minds, not the mind of Christ in us by His indwelling life. We let what appears to be real crowd out the things that are real and true – our God and His word to us.

Our God is always in control. Nothing happens while He is looking the other way. In every situation we face, He has plans for good and for glory. There are no exceptions to this. If you and I will trust in Him alone and not in our own understanding, we will see that good and that glory. We must yield our own understandings and perceptions to look unto Him with the eyes of faith. The gloomiest and most hopeless situation will be the ground from which His good and glory will arise.

We live in the resurrected life of Christ. Resurrections of some kind happen every day. Look for them with the eyes of faith, in full surrender to the will and working of your God.

Tomorrow is resurrection Sunday. In faith celebrate early this great and glorious resurrection, and all resurrections. Here, the sun will shine through at the right time, perhaps tomorrow. A reminder that the Son will always shine through in our God’s perfect timing.