“The next step”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Acts 1: 1-14 (Forward, p. 94) CEV p. 1133
Trying to keep pace with God can be mightily frustrating at times. Either we race ahead of Him, trying to anticipate what He might want us to do, or else lagging behind when He wants us to move forward. A pastor friend once put it this way when describing the pillar of fire and cloud in the Sinai desert. The people of Israel were to always stay right with the cloud, not before and not behind. Go ahead of the cloud during the heat of the day and they risked getting sunburnt, and lag behind at night, and they ran the danger of getting lost. No, they were stick right under the cloud where God was. Well, might this be a lesson for us in today’s churches, whether they are ones that are rooted in history or tradition, or they are the ones that would dispense with all of that and take on what is seen as new and exciting and in tune with our times. We need to be precisely where God wants us to be, that is, where He is, and no place else.
We need to be attentive, then, to whatever the next step will be. This is something that we see well played out in today’s passage from Acts:
-Jesus had already conquered sin, death, and Satan with His death
and resurrection, so what was stopping the disciples now? Good
question, but Jesus had other ideas in mind:
-He needed to prove over and over again, in many ways that
He had been raised from the dead. That was key to everything
and it needed to be indelibly engraved in their minds and in
their experience, because, more than all else, it would this that
would be attacked by sceptics and doubters.
-He needed to teach them further how all this had been pretold
in the Hebrew Scriptures, and explain to them further things
about the kingdom of God.
-He had given them the Great Commission (see Matthew 28: 18-20;
Luke 24:47-48), but seemingly inexplicably, they were to wait around
in Jerusalem for the time being.
-It was so they would receive the promise of the Father, the
Holy Spirit, who would equip and empower them for this task
(see Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8). They could not even hope to
carry out this task without the Spirit’s help.
-And, in the meantime, they were to tarry together in prayer, ‘in one accord’, or as one translation puts it, ‘with a single purpose in mind.’
Maybe, just maybe, this leaves us with some things we might do in our ‘meantime’, while we are waiting to see where our ‘clouds’ might move or when:
-immerse ourselves in the stories of the resurrection, and the truth
and the reality thereof.
-come to know the Scriptures that pretell the coming and ministry of
Jesus.
-wait for and expect the infilling of the Spirit, and tarry and abide in it,
letting the Spirit work in and through us always.
-tarrying in prayer, in one accord, as we await the next step of God.
I say all this because I, for one, want to be in step with God, wherever that might happen to be.
Forward notes: “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer” (verse 14).
“My church is blessed to be partners with our local Turkish Cultural Center. During the holy month of Ramadan, we attend many iftars with our Muslim friends, including one in our parish hall. This time for breaking their daily fast is very specific, and they plan activities leading up to it. A presenter ended early one night, so they needed some extra program material to fill the time. They asked me to speak about Christian prayer practices and how they compared to their own cycle of daily prayers. Some of our parishioners pray the Daily Office together and were delighted to share that experience. And I told our friends how much I enjoy praying the words, ‘O God, make speed to save us, O Lord, make haste to help us’ at the end of the day, and asking God to ‘open our lips, and our mouth shall proclaim your praise’ in the morning. We all enjoyed talking about the beautiful prayers we treasure and how they help us be aware of God’s presence with us.”
Moving Forward: “What are some prayer practices that you treasure? Is there a scripture that helps open your heart when you talk to God?”