—Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)

—Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. (2 Peter 3:4)

—When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)

It is tempting to give up. I’ll tell you that the Bible is true history, but in truth its stories are so far outside of my own experience that it doesn’t feel real. I have never seen fire come down from heaven to consume a sacrifice and the ground around it. I’ve never been brought my supper by ravens. And I certainly haven’t seen anyone raised from the dead, except in those dreams where Dad is fine and nothing ever changed.

In my world, the strongest army wins the battle, the blind stay blind, and when a poor widow’s flour and oil run out, she starves. And it really is another world, isn’t it? Everything changes so much in the span of a single generation; a thousand generation I can’t imagine. I share no common ground with my predecessors. Rivers run dry and mountains change shape, cities and cultures are built and fall into ruin, continents drift as their tectonic plates shift—their world has slowly given way into mine and is no more.

Yet one thing never changes. As Elijah looked to the sky, he saw beyond the blue a God who was very real and alive: a God who holds the whole world in His hands and yet listens to our prayers. And even today we look to the same sky. The same clouds obscure the same stars at night; the same rain falls on the righteous and the wicked alike; the same moon eclipses the same sun. When I look up, time and distance no longer separate me from the prophets and kings and apostles.

This same Jesus…
(Jesus told his disciples that he would come back like a thief. He must have known how we would sculpt and chisel him with our sinful desires after he was gone, and he must have known how surprised we will be when we find that he doesn’t resemble our graven image.)
…will come back in the same way you have seen him go…

Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? …
(He will return to a world that has spent millennia trying to prove that they can exist without him, that they can live and move have their being outside of God; but all these attempts have only proven without a doubt that they cannot.)
…everything goes on as it has since the beginning…

When the Son of Man comes…
(Not if.)
…will he find faith on the earth?

Knowing that the world is transient, Elijah did not look around him for signs of an unchanging God. He looked upwards. And still today many crane their necks toward heaven, anticipating Jesus’ descent from the same azure skies he was taken up into, though the earth to which he will return is a different one.

He will find faith; of that there is no question. I just want to be among those he numbers faithful.