I Wish I Had Been There.

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Acts 1:9-11 says, “ And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.  And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;   Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”

     “I wish I had been there to see that .”  I sometimes think about events that take place and secretly wish I had been there when it had taken place.  Being in the presence of important people never did too much for me.  The private lives of  people, common and famous, are about the same to me.  The rich and famous have the same temptations and choices to make that I do.  Their houses may be bigger and be decorated differently but it is still just a place in which to live. I’ve seen the Aurora Borealis and stood in amazement as the colors bounced in the night sky.  I have been proud to stand on the deck of an American Naval vessel and felt the pride of being a representative of one of the strongest and best nations in the world.   Just hink, however, how would feel to be standing in the small crowd on the Mount of Olives forty days after the resurrection.

     I wish I had been there to see that event.  I may dream of flying through the air but to stand there listening to the Son of God speak  and then to see Him rise from the ground and to go up into the clouds would have been an amazing event.  That  is an understatement to say the least.  It must have caught the small group by surprise as they stood there watching Him ascend into heaven perhaps waiting for something dramatic to take place.  Their attention had to be turned to the two angels  who asked them the obvious question, “Why do you stand there gazing up into heaven?”  He will be coming back just as He left.  We of course have the promise from His own lips in John 14 that He will be returning.  This is one of the greatest moments, but certainly not the only one, such as being in the upper room after the resurrection with locked doors and suddenly the Lord is standing there .  No knock at the dor.  He was just there in their midst.  I wish I had been there too or eve at the Red Sea when it parted and to walk between two walls of water on dry ground, or to see water flowing from a rock or to see Elijah taken up into heaven in a whirlwind, or Mount  Carmel and the altar of rocks being eaten up by the fire of God as He accepted the sacrifice that had been placed on it.  Miracles still occur and I was there in Chattanooga, Tennessee when I was born again in 1972.  I was thee when it  happened and haven’t been the same ever since.  Praise God that He is still working in our lives.