don't look up

Monday June 6th, Acts 1: 9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. 10 They 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." All too often we find ourselves standing there looking up also. As long as our eyes are heavenward, we can justify not using our hands and feet to do heavens bidding. Jesus will return, not in some sadistic fiery apocalyptic way, that is all made up stuff and is as Barbara Rossing calls it in her book, “The Rapture Exposed” a racket. But Jesus is there each and every day in the eyes of the neighbor being served as well as in the eye of the one doing the serving. Looking up only keeps us from looking in those eyes. Praise Music if fine and looking up helps us feel holy, but it only becomes holy when we look down and the least, lost and lonely. The risen Christ calls us instead to look around and announce in word and deed what is already hear, the Kingdom is near.