When the Sky Changed
Ascension of the Lord (Year A)
Scripture
Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47 or Psalm 93; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53
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Prayer
Precious love, your ascended Son promised the gift of holy power. Send your Spirit of revelation and wisdom, that in the blessed freedom of hope, we may witness to the grace of forgiveness and sing songs of joy with the peoples of earth to the One who makes us one body. Amen. (Revised Common Lectionary)
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Reflection
He speaks again after all that has been written— after bread broken, after wounds shown, after the quiet return from death. Forty days of appearing, not as rumor, not as memory fading at the edges, but as presence insisting on itself in locked rooms and morning light. He speaks of the kingdom the way one speaks of weather coming in over the horizon— not invented, not delayed, but arriving in its own time. And they ask the old questions because old questions are safer than new commissions: Is this the moment? Will everything finally turn to what we expected? He does not answer their calendar. He speaks instead of power—not the kind that grips, but the kind that comes down like breath, like wind remembering the shape of lungs. Jerusalem first, then outward lines breaking beyond maps they can hold in their hands— Judea, Samaria, and places without names yet, places still waiting to be spoken into story. And then the sky begins to change. Not sudden, not violent, but like a door opening where there was only distance before. He is lifted and the ground does not collapse, though everything within them does shift. They look up as if looking hard enough might hold the moment in place, might keep the ascending from completing. Two figures stand near them clothed in the ordinary radiance of interruption: Why do you stand here as if the world has ended upward? He will come the same way you have seen him go— not as absence, but as promise carried through the air until it becomes return. So they lower their eyes not in defeat but in instruction. And the world— still open, still unfinished— waits for what will be given next.
PRAYER: Risen and ascended Christ, you surround us with witnesses and send us the Counselor who opens our minds to understand your teaching. Bless us with such grace that our lives may become a blessing for the world now, and in the age to come. Amen. (Revised Common Lectionary)
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