Steadfast Before Sunrise

“But very early on Sunday morning, the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.” —Luke 24:1 (NLT)

The heart found its beat, reuniting with a familiar rhythm. Veins filled with streams of blood, spreading warmth across cold limbs and tracing every pathway back to life. Stiffened hands slowly curled around their wounds. Eyelids, heavy with the weight of death, now lifted. Oxygen filled the lungs. Warm, living breath challenged the silence of a tomb designed to imprison it. 

Death was forced to release its grip, acknowledging it was only a servant to the life it claimed. Only the pause between two movements of an eternal song. It held what was given to it, and when the time came, it opened its hands in obedience and reverence.

White linens folded atop a stone-cold burial slab are left in memory of the body it once dressed. A deliberate action highlighting not what had been abandoned but what had been finished. Like a receipt left atop a debt paid in full, they served as evidence of a transaction the grave had no power to contest.

The stone is rolled away. Suddenly, what had begun to settle into permanence is interrupted without protest. Three days of sealed certainty, hardened grief, and deferred hope shift from reality to witness—witnesses to the illusion of finality meeting the actualization of power. What entered in defeat departed in victory.

The tomb, constructed to eternally hold its breath, exhales. In its exhale, the understanding of endings is undone. Carved by human hands, secured by human fear, and guarded by human authority, its demise testified to sovereignty. A hollow chamber testifying that death, though assured, was never omnipotent.

Before the sun rose over history’s decisive turning point, four women packed burial spices they‘d prepared with intention and care. With tender labor, they drew myrrh and crushed aloes. Each herb is measured not by weight alone but by devotion. The mortar and pestle made ready what the heart had yet processed. With grief-worn hands, they produced aromatic oils to bring beauty to the One who’d brought beauty to them. 

Even in their anguish, they considered the honor of their Rabbi. Among them existed the dignity of those who love past the point of hope. Showing up was all they had left to offer, and they refused to offer nothing. Their love did not wait for understanding, nor did it require the presence of joy. It simply came—faithful in misery, devoted in despondency. They hoped against hope, being stripped of all that made sense, yet steadfast in action. They moved in the obediences that remained: carrying spices, rising early, and trekking the familiar path toward a tomb they believed still held the body of their Beloved. 

When they arrived, their eyes received what their minds could not immediately comprehend.

They had not witnessed the heart finding its beat, reuniting with a rhythm the grave had interrupted. They had not seen the veins fill, the warmth spread, or the cold limbs tracing their way back to the living. They had not watched the stiffened hands curl, or the eyelids lift, or the lungs receive that first defiant breath, challenging the silence of a tomb designed to imprison it. They had missed the moment death released its grip—the unclenching of a servant forced to acknowledge the sovereignty of its Master.

But they saw the evidence. 

They saw the white linens, folded deliberately and like a receipt. They saw the stone-cold burial slab, empty of its occupant, bearing nothing but the memory of a body it had held for three days. They saw the tomb itself—carved by human hands, secured by human fear, guarded by human authority—opened. Its permanence is undone without struggle and without protest.

They had come as witnesses to death, but they left as witnesses to something else: witnesses to the illusion of finality meeting the actualization of power and to three days of sealed certainty crumbling beneath the weight of sovereignty. What they watched enter in defeat had departed in victory. A hollow chamber now testified that death, though assured, was never omnipotent.

And now they stood at the empty tomb with prepared spices in hand, uncovering that their willingness to remain steadfast before sunrise allowed them to first experience the miraculous.

Here lies the holiness of small obediences in the face of darkness: they carry us forward when understanding has failed, and when the grand architecture of our faith has been reduced to rubble. The women had spices, not answers. They had a path they’d walked before, and the decision of devotion guiding their feet along it.

The women came ready to tend to what grief had left behind, only to discover that steadfastness in the dark led them to the sudden dawn. What was birthed as an ordinary act of love, a final offering of kindness, became the front row seat to resurrection’s first announcement.

Their example is proof of the mercy of God. 

Continue to show up, even when hope feels unreasonable. Remain steadfast before the sunrise. Eventually, steadfast steps find themselves in a miracle’s garden.