Friday Thought -- September 2, 2011

Good Morning Friends,

“When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 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. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.” (Luke 24:50-53)

I’ve been thinking a good deal about death recently. I’m in the midst of another wave of grief because of our daughter’s death eight months ago. Death is an enemy – Paul calls it that in his letter to the Corinthians. It is the last enemy that Jesus will defeat. Death seems so final and the separation so permanent.

That’s one of the lies of Satan that is debunked in this final passage from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus didn’t die in this passage, He’d already done that and come back to life, but He did leave the earth and leave His followers behind. The ascension marked the separation of Jesus from those who had come to Him during His time of earth. In that sense, the ascension is very much like a death. The disciples won’t see Jesus again in this world – not until He comes in the clouds at His Second Coming.

Yet the ascension also demonstrates that the separation did not mark the end of Jesus. As He was lifted from the earth and into the clouds, Jesus was very much alive. The ascension wasn’t the end of Jesus – merely His trip from this world to the next.

That’s true of human death, too. Death doesn’t mark the end of any of us. The very moment that we breathe our last breath earth will also be the moment that we breathe our first breath in the world to come. The separation that death brings from those we love is but temporary – at least for those of us who follow Jesus. We’ll be reunited with all other followers of Jesus in the world to come – the permanent world where separation will never come.

The disciples realized the ascension was not the end of Jesus. When Jesus lifted from the earth and returned to His eternal place in heaven, the disciples lifted their voices in worship and went away with great joy and praise to God.

Remember that picture the next time death strikes close to home. For followers of Jesus, death’s separation is only temporary and death is not the end – it’s only the beginning of real life.

His, by Grace,

Steve