Now What?

I keep thinking of the moment when Jesus tells the disciples that they don’t need to know the times or the seasons for when God does things. What is this season we are in now? I would really like to know. I would like to know if this is a long season of suffering in the world. The days feel like they are often growing darker as the image of God in which we were all created is so quickly forgotten. I empathize with the disciples, asking - perhaps even begging - Jesus when they will be restored. When will their world go back to normal, to greatness, to something better than what they know at that moment? 

The disciples are looking to Jesus for answers, for assurance, for hope, and then he…. Leaves. He assures them the Holy Spirit will be there and then he ascends into heaven. I know they are ultimately empowered and the rest of the Acts of the Apostles tells us what that looked like. But in this season, I am empathizing with what I imagine must have been a moment of awe and perhaps confusion. Where some version of the question of ‘Now what?’ rose within each of them.  They were called, they witnessed, they learned, they listened and now it’s their turn. And they have to make the call on their own. 

And so for those of us still here - now what? Does our world feel restored? Do we feel empowered by the Holy Spirit? Can we even recognize what that looks like? With this season we are in - maybe it is a season personal and particular to us, or the larger tumultuous seasons around us - what is it we are to do now?

This is the perennial question and challenge of discipleship. We cannot merely look to the sky and wonder if Jesus will be there to tell us exactly what to do. We have been given the power of the Holy Spirit in order to be witnesses to the world. We may feel the acuteness of the ‘now what’ question at different moments throughout our life. But this is what the disciples were formed for. This is what we are also formed for - to take everything that Jesus offers us and use it to witness to the power of God’s love over all the evil in the world. 

As we look to a new week in front of us, knowing we will soon celebrate Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon us, remembering the depths of God’s infinite love, unto and over death itself, what does it mean to be a witness now? Now what?