Ascension of the Lord
May 1, 2008
Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53
It has been forty days since Easter. Just ten days remain until Pentecost. Jesus told His disciples that He must go away so that the Holy Spirit would come.
In the first chapter of Acts, Jesus tells His disciples to wait and pray and not to leave Jerusalem until they receive the promised Holy Spirit. They ask Jesus if He is going to restore the Kingdom at this time. I love Jesus’ reply. He said that you don’t need to worry about that. I want to be busy in building the Kingdom. That’s just like us sometimes. We worry about how this or that will play out and yet, what will really need to be doing is building the Kingdom. There are so many that need us to be Jesus’ hands and feet — there are so many that need to hear the hope we have in Christ. Jesus told His disciples not to worry about when the Kingdom was going to be restored. Many these days spend huge amounts of time trying to decipher when Jesus will return — Jesus tells us not to worry about it — but be busy building the Kingdom. I’m sure there are things that each of us modern day disciples fret about that take our priorities away from building the Kingdom. What is that thing that keeps you away from building God’s Kingdom?
After Jesus tells them not to worry about such things, He tells them to be witnesses everywhere. Then, He ascends into heaven and the disciples stare. Two men arrive on the scene and ask the disciples what they are doing. In my paraphrase, the men tell the disciples, “Stop staring at the sky and get busy doing what Jesus told you to do.” That is great advice for all of us. What are we staring at? Why don’t we just get busy doing what Jesus told us to do?
