The Hope of Silent Saturday: Trusting God in the Waiting

Heather Suzanne Wolf-National Desk Editor

There comes a time in every life when silence screams the loudest. When prayers seem to echo back unanswered. When we face a closed door, a painful rejection, or a season so dark it feels impossible to see the hand of God at work. These are the “Silent Saturdays” of our lives—the in-between moments when hope seems lost, and heaven feels quiet.

Silent Saturday is the day between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It’s often overlooked in the rush from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, but it holds a powerful lesson for anyone facing pain, uncertainty, or spiritual silence. Imagine how the disciples must have felt. They had watched the One they followed—the One they believed was the Messiah—brutally executed. Their dreams of redemption, of a Kingdom, of hope itself, were buried with Him. All they had left was silence.

And yet, that silence wasn’t emptiness. It wasn’t God abandoning them. It was divine preparation.

The disciples only knew what their eyes had seen: a lifeless body laid in a tomb. But God was working behind the scenes. On Silent Saturday, though they couldn’t see it, the greatest victory in history was unfolding. Death was about to be crushed. Sin was about to be conquered. What seemed like an ending was, in fact, the beginning of everything.

This sacred tension is something many of us can relate to. We cry out in our pain, and when we hear nothing, we begin to question everything. Is God really there? Does He care? Is He still good?

Job, a faithful servant of God long before the disciples, wrestled with the same questions. After losing everything—his family, his health, his livelihood—he sat in the dust and cried out to heaven in confusion. In Job 14:14, he asked, “When a person dies, will he come back to life?” In that moment, Job voiced the universal ache of humanity: is there hope beyond suffering? Is there life after loss?

What Job questioned, Jesus answered. Three days after His death, He rose again. He defeated the grave, proving that silence is never the final word. What looked like abandonment was actually the setup for resurrection. What felt like a hopeless end became an eternal beginning.

This truth should anchor us when we find ourselves in a season of waiting, of grieving, of wrestling with doubt. Just because God is silent does not mean He is absent. Just because you don’t see the evidence of His work doesn’t mean He isn’t moving on your behalf.

There is always more happening than we can see. There’s the earthly reality—what we experience, feel, and endure. But there’s also the cosmic reality—what God is doing behind the curtain of time, working all things together for good. The silence of Saturday gave way to the shout of Sunday.

So if you are in a Silent Saturday moment right now, hold on. God is not done with your story. He is working in the stillness. The same God who rose from the grave is still in the business of resurrection—restoring dreams, redeeming pain, and reviving weary hearts.

Let the silence strengthen your trust. Let the waiting build your endurance. And let the story of Jesus remind you that what looks like defeat is often the doorway to victory.

Victory is coming. Resurrection is coming. And even now, in the silence, God is at work.