Looking to heaven

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11

On Sunday, June 2, we will celebrate the Ascension of our Lord. This is the third great festival of the church year, although, unlike Christmas and Easter, it is largely forgotten by the world at large. The traditional date of Ascension Day is 39 days after Easter Sunday, which always is a Thursday. Some nations today recognize this date as a national holiday, including some countries that you might not expect, like Indonesia and Burkina Faso.

Venezuela is not among those countries, so we follow the custom of observing the Ascension on the next Sunday. The event is of such theological importance that the maximum number of our congregation should be in attendance.

Of course, we have been anticipating the Ascension. This week I talked to the preschool children about it.

The 40 days from Easter to Ascension are supposed to recreate the 40 days in which the risen Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples before being taken up into the clouds. Most of our appointed Gospel readings have been from the 16th chapter of John’s Gospel. Here we find a portion of a long discourse that Jesus gave to His disciples on another “Holy Thursday”, the night of the Last Supper.

In these verses, Jesus explains that He will “return to the Father”, a process of which His death, resurrection and ascension all will be a part. In His death on the cross, Jesus gained the victory over death, which made possible His exaltation in the resurrection and the ascension. The resurrection revealed to us His victory and the promise of our resurrection into eternal life. The ascension then had to happen so that He might receive all power and authority from the Father, to use that authority on our behalf as our Advocate and High Priest, and that in the exaltation of Christ in His human nature as well as His divine nature, we might share in His everlasting life.

Jesus also assured the disciples that He must return to the Father that they might receive the Holy Spirit to guide them to all truth and support them in the trials that they would face in this world until the Second Coming of Christ in glory (John 16:5-7).

Jesus warns His disciples, not only in the first century, but also today that they will face trials in life that they would not face if they were not Christians. Ridicule and ostracism, even bigotry and hatred toward Christ breaking out into violent persecution. We see pleny of evidence of that in our time, in which even the BBC reports that persecution of Christians around the world is at an all-time high.

But with the warning are words of consolation: “These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

The crisis continues in Venezuela

Recently, two articles about Venezuela appeared on-line in Lutheran media. "The Reporter", official newspaper of the LCMS, posted this article, "Crisis in Venezuela: Resting in God while hoping for change" with a quote from Luz Maria.

The Lutheran Heritage Foundation published "As Venezuela crumbles, God's Word brings comfort", with quotes from yours truly.

So far, we have not had a repeat of the nationwide power outage that left 90 percent of Venezuela without electricity or communications for three days. However, we have experienced localized power outages every day, lasting six or more hours. I would like to install more solar-powered lamps around the property for greater security at night. Also, we are looking into the possibility of a solar panel backup system at least to maintain the security cameras and wifi network during the blackouts.

The spring rains have arrived, so we have plenty of water in the well. We need to replace a valve to supply water to our public restrooms (we have an outbuilding with restrooms and showers for large gatherings of people). The power outages present us with a challenge to running our electric pumps, but we have our gas-powered generator. Of course, one difficulty with that is the rationing of gasoline.

The scarcity of gasoline also means we have to carefully plan our use of the car. But already the car has allowed us to make much more efficient use of our time in town. Long periods of waiting for a bus have been eliminated, and we can bring back much more than we can carry in our hands. We expect soon to receive a shipment of medicine from Global Lutheran Outreach and the Confessional Lutheran Church of Chile. The car should make it much easier to distribute the medicine to the people who need it.

 

Prayers for protection answered

On Rogate Sunday, May 27, we asked God’s protection for people in Peru. The country was rocked by a magnitude 8 earthquake early that morning. We prayed especially for Venezuelan expatriates in Peru, and especially for our Lutheran brethren who have become part of the LCMS mission in Lima. Thanks be to God, everyone that we know was unharmed.