What really happened on that Saturday?

Last Sunday night, Easter night, my wife and I took our dog for a walk. It was a beautiful night, warm with a slight breeze. Our canine chafed at her leash, so eager was she to explore downtown Jackson.

The walk was invigorating and my spouse's curiosity had been piqued. When we arrived home, Lois said, "So, I have a theological question."

Uh-oh. I think this one's for me, the retired ordained minister. (Lois' questions about faith are rarely easy ones.)

"So," my wife of nearly 32 years queried, "What happened on the Saturday of Easter weekend? Nothing? That doesn't make sense."

The church never knows what to do with the day between Good Friday and Resurrection (Easter) Sunday. It just sits there, a lump on the Holy Week calendar. Jesus is buried in Joseph of Arimathea's borrowed grave, prepared to rise before dawn on Sunday. From an ecclesiastical perspective, Saturday is a down day.

Struggling to give an answer to satisfy my wife's curiosity, I remembered a visit to seminary years ago from a Greek Orthodox priest who reminded students that the words "he descended into hell" actually mean something.

The priest told his charges that Jesus used Saturday to go to perdition to preach the Gospel to all of those who had lived and died before his arrival on earth. Those who heard the good news in hell and accepted it were made heirs to life eternal. The prelate even showed us a painting of Jesus with one hand on the head of Adam and his other on the head of Eve, pulling them out of hell as he rose on Easter morning.

There's absolutely nothing biblical about what is in the last paragraph but at least the priest had an answer for my wife's, "What happened on Saturday?" question.

I wonder if there's a less dramatic way to look at "holy" Saturday.

When we experience the death of someone dear to us, it seems as if life, as we've known it, is suspended for a time. We can't go forward. Not yet. Backward is closed off to us; the person we've loved is gone. Family members hunker down, preoccupied by final details, and unable to deal with anything more than the crushing blow of death. You stop eating. You cry at the smallest provocation. You find it hard to focus on anything else.

The original disciples, minus Judas, also experienced this paralyzing time -- locking themselves in a house after Jesus' death (John 20:19).

Just because there is little activity does not mean God is not at work.

The time of suspension, of paralysis, of hunkering down after death, no matter how long that takes, can collectively be referred to -- metaphorically -- as Saturday. In the "Saturdays" of our lives, God allows us to regroup after loss before moving forward with the abundant life Jesus promised (John 10:10).

The late Christian apologist, writer and academic C.S. Lewis, after watching his wife die a slow, agonizing death, wrote in "A Grief Observed" that her passing felt like "a door slammed in my face." Later, as his "Saturday" passed, he realized it was his own frantic need that slammed that door.

Kenneth Doka, in "Life Beyond Loss," suggests to us that "Saturday" will end and Sunday will come: "There comes … a time when one has to recognize that a life must be reconstructed beyond loss."

I'm not sure the aforementioned answers my wife's question but I'm grateful, in retrospect, for the grief-filled Saturdays in my life so far.

God is at work even though it seems as if nothing is happening.

Dr. Jeff Long, of Jackson, is executive director of the Chateau Girardeau Foundation and an instructor in religious studies at SEMO.