Luke 24:53

This is the very last verse of the Gospel of Luke — the final word of a biography of Jesus that spans 24 chapters. Just before this, the disciples watched Jesus ascend into the sky from a hillside near Jerusalem. Instead of grieving his departure, they returned to Jerusalem and stayed at the Jewish temple — the central place of worship in their world — praising God without stopping. This ending is remarkable for two reasons: first, praise is the last thing you'd expect after watching someone you love disappear into the sky. Second, Luke's Gospel begins with a scene at that same temple (a priest receiving a divine message), and now it ends there. The circle closes not with loss, but with worship.

Father, teach me to praise you in the gaps — before the answer comes, before the cloud lifts, before I can see what you're doing. Like the disciples, let my first response to even your silences be wonder rather than panic. You are always good. Amen.

The last word of Luke's Gospel is 'God.' Not 'mission,' not 'the future,' not even 'Jesus' — God. And what the disciples are doing with that word is praising. Which is remarkable when you remember what just happened: the person they had left everything for rose into the sky and vanished. By every reasonable measure, this should be a devastating scene. And yet they are not waiting by a window. They are not sitting in stunned silence eating leftovers. They are in the temple, and they cannot stop praising. There is a kind of praise that makes sense — after the breakthrough, after the answer, after the healing finally comes. And then there is *this* praise: praise erupting in the space between what was and what hasn't arrived yet. The disciples didn't have the church yet. They didn't have the Holy Spirit (that's Pentecost, still weeks away in Acts 2). They had a promise and a memory of an empty tomb. Sometimes that's all you have too — a promise and a history of God showing up. Apparently, that's enough to sing.