Day 3- "Taken Before Their Very Eyes"
Passage: Acts 1:9-11 (NIV)

9After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. 10They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

Devotion:

A few years ago a woman was killed in a car accident, leaving motherless two small children. It happened in the middle of the afternoon, they're not quite sure how. She lost control of the car and it crossed into on-coming traffic. She was the only fatality. The parents/grandparents are Christians but have never recovered from this loss. You see it was the second child they had lost. Their son had died a few years earlier. Their words that ring in my head are these, "This just shouldn't happen. This is not what a loving God would intend. This is not the natural order of things. A parent should never outlive their children."

The disciples must have been feeling this way as well. Jesus was with them; He was taken away (crucified); He returned and spent 40 more days with them; then "poof" He was taken from them again. What were they to think? Everything they thought about how things should be or were going to be was shattered again. They must have been incredibly confused. So what did they do? They stood there staring into the sky trying to make sense of something they were incapable of understanding. Two thousand years later we still don't understand the full significance of that event, despite the fact we have the remaining New Testament to explain it (as well as countless Bible scholars). So how could they possibly understand it in the middle of the experience?

There are times when I stand still (as the apostles were standing), looking into the sky in amazement or shock - amazed at a miracle, or shocked by some tragic event. Then God sends someone to me (as in these verses) who says to me, "Why do you stand here looking into the sky?" It's time to get moving, it's time to get doing.

So where do we go, what do we do? The answer is the last thing Jesus told you to do. For the disciples that was go to Jerusalem and wait there for the Holy Spirit. I can't answer that question for you -- when I'm in shock, I can barely answer it for me - what was the last thing Jesus told me to do? But I do know - that is what I will do. That's why this book is so appropriately named "Acts". It's what the apostles (and others) who knew Jesus, did with this knowledge - they did what Jesus told them to do - and their lives and the world was transformed.

Question to Ponder:

What about you? Are you still stuck in tragedy? What was the last thing Jesus told you to do? Are you doing it?

Unsubscribe:
menscommunity@southshores.org