Acts 1:8: Power for the Telling

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Acts 1:8 (NIV)

Power for the Telling

The darkroom at a newspaper is the smallest room in the building and the last one still lit at night. Two technicians work it, they don’t like each other, and the prints come out clean either way. The safelight is the color of a taillight, and under it there are trays, tongs, a wire with paper hanging from it, and a clock neither of them looks at.

Today the church keeps the ascension. Jesus’ friends had just asked him about the schedule, and he told them the times and dates belonged to the Father. Then he promised them power when the Holy Spirit came on them, and told them they’d be his witnesses out to the ends of the earth. After that he was taken up while they watched, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

He gives them a job with one requirement in it. A witness says what he saw. These men had just watched him go, and that sight was the whole content of their work.

The map starts at their own address. Jerusalem is the city they were standing in, where all of it had happened to them. From there it widens to Judea and Samaria, then out to the ends of the earth. The power comes for the saying, and the saying begins where the person already lives.

You can say what you’ve seen God do, and having seen it is the whole qualification the word carries. The men who got this promise had no speech ready, and Jesus told them the power would arrive when the Spirit did. They brought their eyes to it and he supplied the rest.

A safelight makes a darkroom look like a place where nothing at all is happening. One of them lifts a print out of the tray, clips it to the wire, and says, “That one’s clean.” The man who doesn’t like him comes over, looks at it, and says, “It is.”