Acts 1:6,7 "So when they met together, they asked him, 'Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
"He said to them: 'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority'"
Does it ever seem like your 'finish line' keeps moving?
I have a friend who has needed a kidney transplant for quite a while now. Her sister has been willing to donate a kidney but my friend has Lupus and has had to wait until she was healthy enough to have the transplant surgery. Just recently, that window of health had finally come and the transplant surgery was scheduled...and then more bad news. A test result came back that showed something wrong with her sister's health which meant that her sister's kidney may not be the best option. Needless to say, they are crushed. There is still no finish line in site for her to get the transplant and start getting her health back. In fact, it's even harder because there was a finish line in site. I would imagine they feel like marathon runners who, after thinking they are near the line, have been told that the line has moved an indefinitely long amount of distance away.
In the passage in Acts, the disciples are asking Jesus for a finish line. They have at least learned to ask instead of assume. In the way they word their question, there is a distinct difference in the their tone than the tone you hear in the Gospels before Jesus' death and resurrection. Early in the Gospels, the disciples naively assumed that Jesus had come as the long awaited conquering King who would quickly overthrow the evil Roman government. By the time of this question, their expectations had dissolved beneath the emotional rise and fall and rise again of walking with Jesus through the miraculous, the tragedy of crucifixion and then the unfathomed glory of His resurrection.
So now, after all of the hardships and amazing victories that had endured with Jesus they ask, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom of Israel?". In other words, "is this it? Is this where we finally get to see the happy ending where you make all things right and we reign with you?". In essence, it's the question that we as children asked on any road trip that already felt like forever.."are we there yet?"
and Jesus gives them an answer, "It's not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority." In other words, "I can't give you a finish line...it's not for you to know." I'm sure that in that moment, the disciples were probably a little bit devastated. I think anybody who had been come so far with Jesus would have been. "Not there yet."
The longer I live the more "not there yet"'s there seem to be. It feels like we're always rounding what we think to be the final corner of a difficult season only to find that there's a whole lot of difficult left in the journey. It's probably a good thing that Jesus did not tell the disciples how far from the finish line some of them were. Some would have a lifetime of persecution and suffering to face before they crossed the finish line of being in Jesus' presence through their death...but even then, they still had not seen the coming of His Kingdom on earth.
But there is hope...hope even in the words "not there yet". More specifically, the word "yet". The disciples continued on towards the finish line because they bet their lives on "yet". "Yet" is a promise that His Kingdom WILL come. It's a promise that my friend's health WILL be restored one day, even if it has to wait until that day. "Yet" is a promise that one day, Jesus will restore His Kingdom and He WILL make all things right. He will crush sickness and cancer under his foot never to plague and torment His beloved ever again.
"Yet" is the unfailing guarantee there will be for all of God's children a glorious and unending happily ever after.
