all that Jesus began...

"In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven..."

i am a linear, logical thinker. as much as i love to rail against "moderns", defy science, and choose my own way, i'm really not all that radical. i make most decisions based on my limited life experience rather than on eternal promises. i think of other people as a conglomeration of stereotypes who, if i can be judgemental enough, i can always figure out. and i think of God in terms that i can understand, rather than realizing he supercedes my definitions.

so when i read in the first verse of Acts that Luke wrote earlier (in his self-titled essay) only of what Jesus began and not all that Jesus accomplished, i am easily confused. if he meant that he only got to write part of what Jesus did because, as John suggests, there's not enough resources in the world (and God, being God, desired to have his Bible be a environmentally sustainable book and not kill all the trees and such) that's one thing. but instead he seems to say that somehow Christ's departure wasn't the end of his work.

because he's still alive, right? Jesus is talking and if we'd listen then we'd do what he says. and besides that, most importantly, he has to come rescue us at some point from this hell we live in so that we can kick it with him forever.

but i'm thinking that maybe there's a bigger idea behind this. this is the first verse of Acts. as in "the ACTS of the CHURCH." it's like God, through his handy scribe Luke, sets about from the very beginning of Acts to remind us that he's not done. He's not on vacation or sabbatical or even a potty break. Paul caught this...in Collossians he reminded us that all of our hope and glory and life is "Christ in you, the hope of glory!" Jesus himself said that we'd do greater things. Not because we're better, but because he chooses to now indwell each of us, instead of one bodily form. and in this multiplication, there's somehow more. don't take that statement too far...i don't really understand how that's theologically possible. but that's not the point. the point is...

Jesus began.

AND

we continue.

scary.

Happy Halloween.