THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK.
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
The question asked by ‘two men in white robes’ who suddenly appeared to the disciples as they stood craning their necks to see where Jesus had ascended into the clouds.
It was a good question. The disciples had been on a tremendous journey with Jesus. They had
seen how he changed the lives of the people he met. They had come to believe in him as the Son of God. They had seen him hung on a cross to die. Their despair and sorrow had been changed to joy and hope when they found the tomb empty.
Now Jesus had ascended to heaven. They stood watching after him in the way we might watch a train or car carrying a loved one away until it disappears into the distance. But their journey was not over, it was just beginning
“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Just as he was dead and is now alive, he is gone but is still with us. Our task is not to stand gawping up at the clouds, but to continue the journey the disciples were on. Not to hanker after what has gone, but to realise that Christ is always with us
Our task is to live with the mystery of the Risen Lord, between the visible and the invisible, the already and the not-yet, the broken world around us and the Kingdom of God to which we are travelling.
To be, like the disciples, his witnesses in this time and place.
© Stephen Barlow 2024.
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