Between The Promise And The Miracle

They came ready to serve.

The women who followed Jesus had watched everything unfold—the trial, the cross, the final breath. Love compelled them to act even in their grief. It was their custom, their final act of devotion, to prepare His body properly for burial.

But they couldn’t.

They saw where He was laid, spices in hand and sorrow in heart, and then… they had to stop. The Sabbath began. Passover demanded stillness. What love longed to do immediately had to be delayed.

To them, it must have felt wrong.

Bodies were not meant to wait. Grief was not meant to be paused. Honor was not meant to be postponed. Everything in them likely cried out to finish what had been started.

But heaven had written a different timeline.

What they could not see was that their waiting was not an interruption—it was preparation. If they had completed the burial that day, they would not have returned on the first day of the week. If they had not returned, they would not have been the first to witness the empty tomb. What felt like delay was actually divine positioning.

God was not slowing the story down. He was setting the stage for resurrection.

Isn’t that often the case? We feel the urgency. We see what needs to be done. We pray for immediate answers, quick resolutions, open doors. And when nothing happens—or worse, when we are forced to wait—it can feel like God is distant or indifferent.

But Scripture reminds us otherwise. Martha and Mary once felt that same tension when their brother Lazarus fell ill. They sent for Jesus, expecting urgency. Instead, He delayed. By the time He arrived, Lazarus was dead. To them, it was too late. To Jesus, it was right on time. He didn’t come to heal Lazarus. He came to raise him. What they saw as delay was actually the doorway to a greater revelation of God’s power and glory.

And so it is with us. The waiting seasons—the unanswered prayers, the delayed answers, the moments where obedience requires stillness instead of action—are not wasted. They are woven into a larger story that we often cannot yet see. God’s timing is not careless. His delays are not dismissive. His silence is not absence.

He is working—aligning, preparing, positioning. Perhaps the urgency you feel right now is real. Perhaps the desire to act, to fix, to move forward is strong. But what if God is doing something deeper—something that requires time?

What if the story He is writing is greater than the one you are trying to finish? In those moments, the most powerful prayer may not be for speed, but for surrender:

“Thy will be done… in Your time.”

Because those who wait on Him are not forgotten. They are being readied. And when the moment comes—when the stone is rolled away—they will find that what felt like delay was actually the threshold of something far greater than they imagined.

With Gratitude, Pastor Jesse