Silence was the defining sound of Saturday.
Not the holy kind, like in a quiet church or a moment of prayer. No, this was the kind of silence that settles in your chest after your whole world falls apart. The kind that screams louder than words because you don’t know what to say.
For the disciples, Saturday was the day after everything they believed in died.
Literally.
Friday had been a horror show—brutal, bloody, and public. Jesus didn’t just die; He was humiliated. Executed like a criminal. And now, on Saturday, there was nothing. No rescue, no miracle, no dramatic twist. Just a sealed tomb and a deafening silence.
This is where we forget the story. We jump from crucifixion to resurrection like it’s a quick montage. But for the people who were actually there, Saturday was a day that felt a year-long. But it wasn’t a pause. It was a gut punch.
Peter couldn’t get the haunting sound of that rooster crowing out of his mind. Mary was sobbing. They, along with the other disciples, were locked away, hiding, confused, afraid, and traumatized. Would the Romans come for them next? Would they kill everyone to ensure there would be no trouble? To silence the movement, once and for all? Everything Jesus said had felt so clear before, but now? Now it just looked like failure.
I’ll bet at some point, Peter thought, “If only I had just stayed on the boat…“
Saturday is the day your faith doesn’t feel like enough. It’s the day between promise and payoff. The day when hope feels stupid. The day when God seems quiet, distant, or worse—absent. It’s the day you sit in the gap, unsure whether to move on or hold on.
Sometimes it’s a day. Sometimes, it’s a lifetime. And yet, Saturdays matter. Maybe more than we realize.
You see, in the silence of Saturday, something was still happening. Heaven hadn’t gone dark. Jesus’ body may have been buried in a borrowed tomb, but He hadn’t stopped working. In ways the disciples couldn’t see yet, the story was still being written.
What they couldn’t see—and what we often forget—is that while Jesus’ body rested in the tomb, His spirit was at work.
There’s a long-standing belief in Christian theology, rooted in scriptures like 1 Peter 3:18–20 and Colossians 2:15, that Jesus was waging spiritual war on our behalf. That in those silent, dark hours, He descended into the depths to confront the powers of hell itself. Not as a victim, but as a conquering King.
He wasn’t idle, and he wasn’t hiding. He was plundering the enemy’s camp, disarming the forces of darkness, declaring once and for all that sin, death, and shame would no longer have the final word. It wasn’t a nap—it was a rescue mission. A cosmic takedown.
The disciples thought the silence meant the story was over, but Jesus was just getting started.
That’s true for us too.
Sometimes God does His deepest work in the silence. In the waiting. In the Saturday spaces of our lives, where the pain lingers and the questions don’t get answered fast enough.
We want resurrection. We want Sunday. But we live most of our lives in Saturday.
The faith it takes to worship on a mountaintop is real, but the faith it takes to trust God in the middle of the valley—when nothing makes sense, and everything hurts—is the kind of faith that changes you.
So what held them together on Saturday? My best guess is that some of Jesus’ words from only a few days before echoed in the minds of his friends and loved ones:
“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.” (John 16:20)
In the fog of fear and the numbness of loss, maybe someone whispered it aloud. Maybe it sounded ridiculous in the moment—but maybe it was enough to hold on. Not with white-knuckle certainty, but with barely-there hope. The kind that hurts because you still want to believe.
Jesus hadn’t promised they wouldn’t grieve. He’d promised that grief wouldn’t get the final word.
That was enough. Sufficient grace.
So if you’re in a Saturday season right now, take heart.
Even when it feels like nothing is happening, resurrection is on the way. God is not done. The silence is not the end of the story. It’s just the middle. This too shall pass.
The joy of Sunday is worth the wait.
