Today is Saturday. Yesterday was Saturday. This is living in Saturday.

That thing you’ve been waiting for – the job you’ve wanted, the soul mate you’ve prayed to find, the wayward child you can’t seem to reach, the endless impulses that hold you, healing that never seems to come… you’re living in Saturday.

Are you hurting a hurt that seems endless? Carrying a burden that presses you down? Has your path had more valleys than hills? Are you wondering if your suffering will ever be lifted from you? You’re living in Saturday.

Have you tried and tried only to meet failure after failure? Have you prayed from the depths of your soul, believing God would answer, only to be met with silence? Has your well of Hope run dry and you’re on your knees with no more words? This is your Saturday.

You’re not alone.

Today is Saturday. But…

Sunday is coming.

There was this guy. He had a dear friend – a best friend. When these two guys met, they clicked as if they’d been friends forever. The guy quit his job and with lofty goals, the two of them set out to change the world. Things started out pretty good and the guy believed he and his friend really could achieve their dream.

Then Saturday came.

His friend died.

Dreams were shattered; a future erased. Darkness filled the man’s soul with unspeakable sorrow, swallowing up every ounce of hope he had. Loss. Failure. The Valley. Silence from above.

Suddenly, Sunday arrived – and Sunday changed everything.

His friend returned, alive and back to change the world.

You might be thinking, “Seriously? You expect me to believe that? Even if it’s true, that wouldn’t happen with me.”

The man’s name was Peter; his friend was Jesus Christ. It happened. It’s true. And perhaps the end to your suffering won’t come in three days, or your loved one won’t return to you as Jesus did for Peter, but your Sunday is coming.

Try this modern-day true Saturday story…

Ben was a small-town boy who loved to play ball. Having not yet hit his growth spurt in High School, Ben was a good player, but not great. In fact, by his senior year in high school, Ben was a better basketball player, but he was filled with a passion for baseball. Like any Midwest kid with a baseball field in his backyard, his dream was to play ball in the big leagues. Scouts often passed over his small town when seeking college players and by the time Ben graduated high school, he had put baseball behind him. No offers had come in. No scholarships had been offered. Saturday had come.

Right after his birthday that same year, his high school coach encouraged him to attend a summer event to highlight his baseball talent. $50 from his birthday money got him into the camp where he caught the attention of a several colleges. Ben went to college, started playing ball and one day, one glorious day, Sunday came for Ben.

Ben Zobrist was drafted out of college by the Houston Astros and today, he is the 2016 World Series MVP. Looking back, Ben never thought he’d play in the major leagues. He was happy to ever play to pay for college – that had been his goal post high school. But Sunday… Sunday had something greater in store.

There is great hope in Sunday, but first, you have to get through Saturday.

First, we must yield to the fact that God’s ways are not our ways. When He seems absent, it is when He is doing His mightiest work in your life. He is putting together all the pieces and parts that will make your Sunday so incredible. God is taking people, moments, situations and circumstances near and far, and setting them in motion. God is taking your heart, allowing it to break apart so that He can build it back up to be more in tune and better prepared for His plan to usher in the Sunday that awaits you. God is so incredibly close on Saturday, it’s not that He’s absent – it’s that He’s so close, we don’t recognize Him.

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” ~Isaiah 55:8

Next, we must yield to the fact that God will answer our prayers in the best way for us – and we simply cannot, from our infinitesimally limited perspective, know what that is. We take delight in asking applicants where they see themselves in five years, ten years. Entire businesses are built upon developing life plans and how to get to where we see ourselves in retirement when we’re 25 years old. Does any 25 year old have any sense of the responsibility and discipline it takes to foresee life in retirement at age 25? No! But we ask, we expect, we plan accordingly. Friends, does it not seem strange to stand on the East coast and plot a course for the Pacific by simply telling ourselves, “Just head West” with the expectation the path is straight and we’ll reach our destination easily? Yet, that is what we do with so many things in our lives. We forget that we have Someone who is far wiser, whose vision is far wider and plans are far greater than anything we could imagine.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. ~Isaiah 55:9

Third, and this may be the most difficult, we must be patient. For us, a day is 24 hours, or 1440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds long. When every moment seems to count, no wonder it feels like forever for Sunday to arrive. For Peter, it was roughly a day, and believe me, when His hopes and dreams were shattered, that day may as well have been a year. But for some, it is literally years; hundreds and hundreds of days, millions of minutes, hundreds of millions of seconds.

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. ~Romans 8:25

Here’s the really cool thing. Are you listening?

Sunday happens in a second. In just the passing of a second, a new day arrives. That’s all it takes for God to work and for Sunday to arrive.

For still the vision awaits its appointed time; ~Habakkuk 2:3

He has made everything beautiful in its time. ~Ecclesiastes 3:11

God knows all about your Saturday. He knows that Saturday can last a day and seem like a year; Saturday can last years and feel like forever. God knows that when we’re living in Saturday, He can seem silent to us, distant from us, absent from our lives. During that Saturday between the day Jesus died and rose again, God was defeating death! Thumbing His nose at evil and preparing to declare victory to all of creation! Friends, God is never absent, never not working for your good, for on Sunday, it will be revealed to us all the work He has been doing to bring about the dawn of joy that follows our Saturdays.

Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” ~John 13:7

Are you living in Saturday? Take heart dear friend… your Sunday is coming.