Thanks For The Forty Days

On this final Lord’s Day Sunday in another month, we are still in very special and privileged times. Some of us are conscious, with each passing day that this was the time, after resurrection, when Jesus worked steadfastly with His disciples, to convince them that He was alive not just as an apparition or some ghost-like being, but alive in flesh and bones. He was flesh and bones before He died and they knew Him as such. They lived with Him, having given up all, to be His followers and learn from Him. He was their totally Human and totally Divine Lord; their Physical and Spiritual Example and Pattern; their Heavenly and Earthly Master and Teacher. They knew Him personally and in person. He was crucified before their very eyes and this was extremely traumatic and most disheartening for them all.

Then, three days after His burial, their beloved Jesus, rises victorious from the grave. He is alive, but it’s very hard for them to get this fact wrapped around their deeply dejected hearts and traumatically battered minds. Jesus knows all this and expects all the wavering emotions and resistance from His own. He therefore has prepared to stay with them, in human form, for forty days, to convince them that He is alive in flesh and bones. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. Acts 1: 3. This still excites me and has me ever conscious that this is the time when long ago Jesus was convincing His own that He was alive. I call this - flesh and bones – alive, not just in the unseen, but in the seen.

Where are you in this time which is not as celebrated in the same way as Jesus' Resurrection? What daily convincing proofs is He bringing to you who need it? I can assure you that as much as I call myself a believer and follower of Jesus, I still need convincing proofs. Just as I still need Easter or Resurrection, to bring me back to the reality of Jesus’ Crucifixion, to bring me to a retreat time or pilgrimage time, in order to refresh, renew and teach me more of His Crucifixion, so too, with these forty days. 

I thank God for the remembrance of them, as God, the Holy Spirit works convincingly on all who are His. He does this to show, yes, you heard correctly. Our Lord does what He does, to show us, not just tell us, that He is alive in flesh and bones and that the Kingdom of God will come, through flesh and bones.

How is that possible, you ask? For one thing, when Jesus spoke to the disciples about the Kingdom of God, before He ascended, back into heaven, He was human, flesh and bones. Was it not flesh and bones then, speaking about the Kingdom of God and thus bringing it in, through the human? Jesus is still convincing His disciples you know, for in a little while they will receive resurrected bodies, through the Pentecostal Spirit. In a little while, with their risen living Jesus indwelling them in Spirit, they who are flesh and bones will be showing Him in works and words. They will be speaking of the Kingdom of God and bringing others in. 

Where are you then?