The story of our faith holds the death of yesterday leading into the silence of tonight’s darkness before it breaks into the hope-filled joy of tomorrow. 

This is the pattern into which we have been baptized, hell, this is the pattern of our whole lives. Tonight is not the event, tonight is not the happening. Tonight is vigil time, whatever that means within the “in between” that vigil means. 

Like the night before a big meeting and you need to be prepared. Like the night before you say “I do” to that very special someone. Yes, tonight is like those long bathroom vigil visits before tomorrow’s colon cleaning. Vigil. 

Can’t light a candle in your apartment here to honor the wait, neither can you speed up or slow down vigil’s time. 

The human heart only knows tonight, because the human heart only knows vigilance—the keeping watch that happens when the mind and soul cannot choose between hope, eagerness or unknown fears. 

We know what it is to wait, patiently or not, on edge for the next to become the now. 

On a night like this we wonder if God’s on a long coffee break. Where is Almighty God anyway? Why hasn’t God done something as though we’re in control of God’s mind and calendar. 

Vigilance is the order of tonight. A patient but anxious vigilance- holding in tension two dramatically different events but the same outcome—one of life, one of death and one of life again. 

Morning will break. Will all our “alleluias” be returned to us? 

The sequence of the story matters: Before the light breaks, before that impossible dream that Jesus might very well live again. 

We remember what happened yesterday…we experience tonight just like all the vigil’s we honor and keep. We anticipate with a gracious hope-filled joy what could very well happen tomorrow.