www.bible.com/1713/act.1.9.csb
A little celebrated day on the church calendar probably deserves more attention that we give it. It’s called Ascension Day, and it is the day 40 days after Easter (Resurrection Sunday) that we remember the last day of Jesus. For forty days after His resurrection, our Lord made several appearances to His disciples, and while only a few are recorded in the final pages of the gospels, we are led to believe that there were longer visits in Galilee after the first couple of weeks. During these extended visits, we might surmise that he offered additional teaching to them, teaching which they then explained to us. For example, the sacrificial purposes of His crucifixion were probably explained to them, something which He had only touched on before. He might have explained the Scriptures to them showing them (like the disciples on the way to Emmaus) how the Old Testament and His new revelation fit together, which explains how Peter and the others so readily quoted Old Testament passages in Acts. Of course this is all speculation, because all we really know is that He spent that time with His disciples. But I have no doubt that would have been a master class of preparation for them as they were prepared to build the church on Jesus’ message and life.
For us, most of us anyway, have had to spend these 40 days in quarantine, and only this month have started to see some things open up. So I hope you all have had plenty of time preparing your heart and soul for when things open back up again. There is a sense in which the church itself is going to be reborn, rebirthed from its cocoon of stay-at-home orders and social distancing. In the coming weeks we will need to do some ascending, rising from our homes on Sunday mornings and making our way to the churches to rejoin one another in spirit and song.
My hope for you is that you have been healthy, and that you have been working on your spirit as much as your flesh. We all want to be healthy in body, but it will have been for nothing if our spirit is not also healthy. I want to encourage you, if you haven’t already, get into the word. Get into prayer. Get into a local church where you are fed. Please don’t depend solely on the dollup of truth you get in these blogs. Pursue truth. Pursue God’s Work in your life and others. Never be content with what you already know, but always be seeking.
One day I hope we all ascend to meet Him in the air. Until then, always be ready. God bless you today!
Meritt Musings 