The Worlds Hardest Where’s Waldo

                  This Sunday is one of the Churches “optional” feast days. We can either celebrate the seventh Sunday after Easter and its assigned readings or Ascension Sunday which is the feast celebration of Jesus going up into heaven after being raised from the dead. In the reading from Acts (1:1-11) Jesus rises into the cloud with his devout disciples watching mystified from below. Then something odd happens. Two angels in their heavenly garments appear next to the disciples and sort of mock them? The angels  ask the disciples why they are looking for Jesus up in the heavens when he will return to them the same way they saw him go up into heaven. Basically the angels are saying the disciples are looking in the wrongs place and are a little cryptic about where exactly they should be looking. I imagine the disciples got a little bit frustrated in that moment. Goodness knows I would.

                  I think feeling like you don’t know where to look for Jesus is something we can all relate to though. You can look for him in humanity but can be hard to see him through the hate, war, hunger and sin that run rampant through so many aspects of our world. You could look for him in nature but that also comes with its own calamities of fires, natural disasters and violence. It’s like an awful game of Where’s Waldo. This one is wearing the right outfit but the face is wrong. This one has the right face but the wrong clothes. And they’re always so small it you almost need a magnifying glass. I wish I could wrap up this post by giving you some amazing pastoral advice about how to make finding Jesus Waldo easier, but I don’t. My best advice is to keep looking and when you do get glimpses of him in your life celebrate. Celebrate and be filled with as much glee as a little kid upon finding Waldo in one of their books.

Peace,

Pastor Corey