On This Day: From Parting of Grief to Parting of Joy

   And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God. (Luke 24:50-53)

   There is great value in allowing our inner beings to attach to the realities described in God’s word, particularly when we are called to meditate on such extreme experiences as Jesus’ two partings!

   I find that my growing understanding of the Jewish mindedness of Jesus’ disciples helps me appreciate all the more what these people lost when Jesus died. I can’t think of a parallel in the Gentile (non-Jewish) world that corresponds to the expectations involved in Jesus’ first coming and the grief of witnessing it ending in such unexpected tragedy.

   Think of the shock to the system when the disciples saw these expectations and dreams utterly shattered with Jesus’ helplessness against the conspiracy to take him down, and his enemies’ success in destroying him as they had strategized. Think of the weight of grief and sorrow on these disciples that they could not even believe the wonderful news that angels appeared to the women and told them that Jesus was live. Jesus’ parting in death by crucifixion had not only killed him, but it had destroyed something in them!

   When I meditated on Luke’s concluding paragraph, and I considered how joyful the disciples were even though Jesus was leaving them again, I felt the weight of conviction regarding how the resurrection of Jesus Christ ought to be impacting me and the body of Christ in my community. Jesus is gone for us as he was for the disciples that day. It was a parting. He is no longer here in the flesh. Feeling his absence is real.

   However, those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in the “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” are the only people in the whole wide world who have faith in a living redeemer. Everyone else traces their beliefs back to the dead.

   On the other hand, the disciples were not only overwhelmed with joyful worship because Jesus was alive, but because everything they believed about him was still in effect. He was the Messiah after all. His Messianic kingdom had come as promised. It was not a military kingdom driving earthly despots out of the land. It was a spiritual kingdom delivering people out of the domain of darkness and transferring them into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins (Colossians 1:13-14).

   AND… there was the added reality that Jesus had promised that the Father’s promise was going to be fulfilled in Jerusalem very soon. What they had missed at his first parting (that they only had to wait a couple of days and he would be alive again) they were attaching to at his second parting. The Holy Spirit would be sent to empower the church for its mission in the world and they would wait for this in joyful expectation.

   Today, the mirror of God’s word calls me to look at how I am doing. Does the fact that my Redeemer lives impact me with joyful worship? And, is the activity of the Holy Spirit real in my life as I seek to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18), to “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16), to be “led by the Spirit” (Gal 5:18), to “live by the Spirit” (Gal 5:25), and to fellowship with “those who live according to the Spirit (who) set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5)?

   Sometimes, the Scriptures do such a rapid Beatitudinal Journey on us that we find ourselves “hungering and thirsting for righteousness” and feel like we must have just rolled down the downside of the valley through “blessed are the poor in spirit… those who mourn… (and) the meek…”, leaving us at rock bottom looking up at what is next.

   For me, that means setting my mind on the realities of the resurrected Redeemer and his continuing work through the Holy Spirit. Even if it’s not as much as I might wish, I want it to be more than I have, and I will wait in expectation for God’s will to be done in me and his church as it is done in heaven. 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)