Aug 1, 2022
The Almost Daily will be on Summer Vacation until August 8th. But fear not! You will receive a devotional each Monday through Friday from the excellent Mockingbird Devotional entitled Daily Grace. Enjoy! - Paul Walker
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:6-8)
When we were kids, there was this one year my little brother decided he simply could not wait to find out what my parents had gotten him for his birthday. After careful reconnaissance, he discovered where his gift was hidden away. He crept into that closet one night after everyone had gone to bed and unwrapped a box that held a gleaming Dallas Cowboys helmet. My parents eventually found out, after discovering my brother’s terrible job of rewrapping the present.
It doesn’t really matter what age you are: It is hard to wait for the gift, especially when you’re not exactly sure what the gift is. In this passage from Acts, the gift that Peter and the apostles longed for was the best kind of kingdom they could envision at that point: a kind of Jewish Camelot, with Jesus as King Arthur, and the eleven of them sitting around as Knights of the Round Table.
What the apostles could not have imagined, at least at that point, was that when they finally opened the gift, it would be nothing less than the gracious presence of Christ, not beside them but inside them, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This gift would bring a new power that would be employed not in kicking the Romans out of Israel but in announcing throughout the Roman Empire and beyond the new reign of God’s grace. Whether Peter and his friends could have realized it or not (and whether we realize it or not), this is a gift worth waiting for.
[Larry Parsley, Daily Grace - Mockingbird Devotional Vol. 2]
