Day 89 - Still Looking Up?

Acts 1:6–14

Picture the scene. Eleven men, a handful of women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, standing on a hillside outside Jerusalem, craning their necks at an empty sky. Jesus has just ascended into heaven, and two angels — because apparently two angels in white are required for moments like this — have appeared beside them with what might be the mildest rebuke in all of scripture: "Why do you stand here looking into the sky?"

It's almost funny, isn't it? These are the people who walked with Jesus for three years. They watched him heal the sick, calm the sea, and rise from the dead. And now, at this pivotal moment, with the whole of creation holding its breath — they're just … gazing upward. Mouths open. Possibly blinking.

I don't blame them one bit.

But the question the angels ask is worth thinking about in our own quietly ordinary lives: why are you still looking up?

Because here's the thing, just before the Ascension, the disciples asked Jesus a question that reveals everything about where their hopes were still pinned: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" After everything, after Easter, after resurrection appearances in locked rooms. They still wanted the old, old story — the political restoration, the conquering king, the nation reborn in power. They wanted the kingdom they could see and measure and maybe put on a flag.

Jesus doesn't exactly answer that question. He redirects it. The times and dates? Not your business. But here's what is your business: you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses. Not rulers or revolutionaries, but witnesses.

There's something quietly radical about that word. A witness doesn't control the outcome. A witness simply tells the truth about what they've seen.

And then Jesus is gone.

So there they are on that hillside — and what do they do? They go back to Jerusalem and to the upper room. And they prayed - the text is very particular about this: they all joined together constantly in prayer. In a culture where gathering like this was unusual and even countercultural, perhaps also dangerous — they gathered, where they waited and they prayed.

This is where the church begins. Not with a strategy or with a manifesto or with a committee report (though maybe a Church Meeting???). But with a group of ordinary, bewildered, hopeful people in a room, praying together because they didn't know what else to do — and trusting that God did.

Lord, when we gather to read and reflect and question and wonder, meet us in the room. When we are tempted to keep our eyes fixed on the sky — on the answers we expect, the outcomes we planned for, the kingdom we thought we wanted — gently turn our gaze. Show us where your Spirit is already moving, in the person beside us, in the word we almost missed, in the silence between the sentences. Make us witnesses: not to certainty, but to you. Amen.

Neil Chappell