Daily Devotions
They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. Acts 1:10
In 1992 Eric Clapton won the Grammy Award with his recorded song “Tears in Heaven.” He composed it after his four-year-old son had fallen to his death from an apartment building in New York City.
Christian parents who lose children through accidents or sickness can assuage their grief with the assurance that their little ones, on earth and in heaven, have “their angels” (Matthew 18:10) to attend to them – high-ranking angels, so Jesus stresses, who “always see the face of My Father in heaven.”
Not tears but great joy attended the heavenly homecoming of God’s own Son, the exalted Jesus. Participating in the joyful celebration were angels and archangels with all the company of heaven, also with the throne angels (the cherubim and the seraphim). They rejoiced because the Son of God, become man, had fulfilled His mission on earth and could now return in triumph. All along, when in all eternity the heavenly Father planned the salvation of sinful mankind, and also when at the fullness of the time the Son came to earth to die and to rise again, angels were concerned. The apostle writes that with the preaching of the Gospel “by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven,” angels hand longed “to look into these things” (1 Peter 1:12). The Greek verb implies that they leaned forward and strained themselves to catch a glimpse of what God was doing to save mankind.
There was joy also on earth when Jesus ascended into heaven. Saint Luke reports that the disciples “worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:52). For Jesus it was “mission accomplished”; for them it was “mission to be accomplished.” And not only the angels and apostles but also we rejoice at the Son’s heavenly homecoming. In heaven Jesus intercedes for us and with His grace governs His church.
PRAYER: Thank You, Dear Lord Jesus, for completing Your work of redemption and for interceding for us. Amen.
(Devotions from “With Jesus Every Day” copyright 1997, CPH. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be printed, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of Concordia Publishing House. Permission is granted for one-time emailing of this link to a friend. For information on other devotional material, please contact CPH at 800-325-3040 or visit CPH at www.cph.org.)