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In the moment when God seems most absent, he is strangely most present. 

With the suffering of Jesus on the Cross, the subsequent burial, and then the haunting absence of his presence in Jerusalem, the day after must have been peculiar for most and even more painful for some. 

A few were relieved, and a handful were perplexed. 

We often talk about experiencing death, and even more about experiencing resurrection—but what does it mean for us to experience today? To experience the moments of burial? 

When you’re dunked in the waters and then pulled back out, what’s the significance of the moments you spend immersed? Not the action, not the result, just the experience of being absent. 

In the moment when death has overtaken Christ and he is yet to rise, it appears God is absent. Missing. Resigned. 

But maybe in those moments he is as engaged with His Love as he has ever been. 

Because in that experience is the culmination of His identification with Us. All that He is colliding with all the we are not. And without such, we cannot experience Sunday. 

This day, in the Great Absence, we learn what we cannot do. We cannot fight for ourselves. 

Yet there is one who is fighting to take our place and will be victorious in our place. I am thankful for the Absence. That eerie, lonesome, abandoned absence. Because on this day, we are forced to wrestle with our helplessness.