Saturday, May 31, 2014
Luke 24:51-52 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.
HE STILL BLESSES US
Even without a visible Jesus by their side, the disciples could return to Jerusalem with great joy. For as Jesus was parting from them, His hands were raised in blessing. They knew He could still bless them even when parted from them! Hadn't He promised that He would always be with them?
We often trust our own eyes to tell us whether or not Christ is with us and able to bless us, don't we? But if we stand with the disciples on Ascension Day and see Jesus parted from us, but never stopping His blessing of us, then we too will be able to return to our tasks with great joy and comfort.
We don't know the words Jesus spoke that day, but certainly the apostles were echoing the content of Jesus' Ascension blessing when they would later write of "grace, mercy, and peace". Grace, mercy, and peace are given to us sinners through the forgiveness of sins Jesus earned for all. We have these blessings because of Christ's completed sin sacrifice at Calvary, and because of His victory over death and the devil at the Easter tomb.
The disciples saw, and so do we through their testimony, that "neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). The disciples could return to a soon-to-be destroyed Jerusalem with great joy because they know, and so do we, that ...
Tho' devils all the world should fill, all eager to devour us,
We tremble not, we fear no ill, They shall not overpow’r us ...
He's by our side upon the plain With His good gifts and Spirit.
And take they our life, Goods, fame, child, and wife,
Let these all be gone, They yet have nothing won;
The Kingdom ours remaineth!
-- Abridged and Adapted from the Lutheran Spokesman
