The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment” (Luke 23:55–56). The cross of Jesus stands at the heart of history—the hinge on which the door of eternity swung wide for you and me. Yet on that Friday, as darkness cloaked the land and the temple curtain tore, it must have seemed to those watching that the world itself had fractured.
Luke’s account of the Cross and Resurrection portrays not only the cataclysmic events of Jesus’ death but also the varied human responses to it—responses that echo through time. In the midst of despair, the women simply did the next thing. And in doing so, they bore quiet witness to something greater than grief.
In his final hours, Jesus’ 12 disciples deserted and fled. But the women remained. They stood at a distance, watching, waiting. Love held them there as their world unraveled. The one they followed, trusted, and hoped in now hung among criminals, bloody, naked, and dead.
They had walked with him from Galilee, heard his words, served him, and loved him. And now, in confusion and loss, they did not turn away. They did not desert or flee. Despite seeming futility, they marked the tomb. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. Strange ingredients, echoes of an earlier life. Gifts of worship—fit for a royal child, now fit for a corpse.
It seems so small, so ordinary. But in their sorrow, they simply did what they could. They obeyed the Sabbath command, waiting when they must have longed to act. And when the time came, they returned to the tomb—not in anticipation of an empty grave but rather prepared to love their dead Lord.
Faithfulness in the dark is often quiet, unseen. Simple, daily obedience. Keeping the Sabbath. Tending to the small and the sacred. Preparing for what lies ahead, even when the road is shrouded.
It is easy to praise God in clarity, to act boldly when conviction burns bright. But what of the in between? The silence between Friday and Sunday? Between despair and resurrection? Between death and dawn? The women show us the quiet strength of obedience in uncertainty.
They were not strategizing for a resurrection. They were not waiting for an empty tomb. They simply loved Jesus, and so they did the next thing.
Our world too often feels like that space between the shroud of Good Friday and the dawn of Easter Sunday. Confusion. Uncertainty. Questions. Darkness falls, hope wavers, and the way forward is unclear. But the women remind us that faith does not demand we see the end from the beginning. Faith does not insist on a map. Faith asks only that we do the next thing.
Like the women, we remain faithful in the ordinary, trusting that Sunday morning will come.
Perhaps you are in a waiting season—in a lull, looking for clarity, uncertain of what comes next. Could it be that you are not meant to see too far ahead? Perhaps you are meant simply to trust, one step at a time. Perhaps you’re meant simply to do the next thing.
Jesus committed his spirit to his Father, trusting beyond the veil of death. And so must we, in our own moments of darkness, in our own confusion and questions and waiting. The Cross is not the end of the story.
The darkness does not have the final word. We know this in a way the women who faithfully waited on the Sabbath rest did not.
And so we do the next thing, and we wait for the dawn.
Dan Steel is a UK-based pastor and church planter. He is currently the principal and ministry program director at Yarnton Manor, just outside Oxford.
