Day 345: Step Away
Sometimes the Work Can't Continue Until You Leave
Then they gathered around him and 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. 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.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. While they were looking intently up into the sky as he was being taken, suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This man Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” — Acts 1:6-11 (NIV)
Reflection
Staying can become the problem. The very presence that shapes a thing can keep it from becoming what it could be. And so, sometimes the next move is to step away. We don’t arrive at this point easily. By the time we get there, we have invested deeply. We have taken ownership and earned the right to stay. All of that is why we are often the last ones to recognize that our staying has become the obstacle.
This is the moment the disciples are in at the beginning of Acts, and Jesus is, of course, the perfect model of what must come next. Notice the question they ask: “Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” After all that they’ve been through — after the cross, the resurrection, the Great Commission. In fact, this question comes after forty days of post-resurrection teaching, which Acts 1:3 tells us was specifically about the kingdom of God! They have had every opportunity to absorb what He has been saying. And they are still asking Him when He is going to do the work.
The question is telling. They are waiting for Jesus to be the one who finishes. Even after He has very clearly laid out their assignment, they are still postured toward Him as the one who will carry it. This orientation must change before the work can become theirs.
Jesus reframes. The time is not yours to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses. He is moving them from speculation about His timing to clarity about their assignment. Then He is taken up before their eyes and a cloud hides Him from their sight.
We should not be so hard on the disciples. How could they be so stupid, after Jesus has clearly laid things out for them? But 2000 years later, are we really that different? I spent a good hour the other night listening to someone talking about the “end times” and his particular interpretation of the prophecies that prove that time is short. And at the end of it, I was still left with the question: even if any of that were true, how does it change our essential mission?
See, those who are looking for signs of the end of the world are just like the disciples. They’re waiting on Jesus to finish the work. And make no mistake, He will come again to usher in a new beginning. But none of that changes the fact that He left us with the keys and very specific instructions on how to use them. This very point is, in fact, why He needed to leave.
As long as He was physically present, even after the resurrection, the disciples could still defer to Him. They could still ask the question. The option of waiting for Jesus to do it remained on the table. His ascension, though, removes the option. The presence that He promised in the Great Commission is still real, but the physical accompaniment ends. The work is now fully theirs to carry, because the version of Jesus that they could hand it back to is gone.
The disciples eventually understood what we often don’t. Jesus wasn’t pushing a cosmic pause button. His instruction to them was not just “Hold on till I come back.” He had handed them the work of continuing to nurture and build the kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” Yet so often we gather weekly in our “services,” clinging to a vision of holiness that somehow demands isolationism, hiding in the crevices, bemoaning the fact that the world is so bad when in fact we have been charged with bringing the good news that will restore that very world.
“Why do you stand here looking into the sky?” The angels may as well have been speaking directly to you and me. In this moment, the disciples have just received the most significant commission in human history, and within minutes of that they are oriented backward, upward, watching where Jesus went. The angels are there to remind them: the looking-back posture must end. The forward-facing work has to begin.
Bringing all this back to earth, so to speak, consider this: If the people around you still need you to do the work for them, then the work can’t be completed. That’s perhaps a hard sentence. It may read to you as an accusation, as if you should have removed yourself already, or as if your continued presence is somehow a failure. This is not what I mean to say. What I am trying to get across is that completion is a horizon. We are all moving toward it in pieces, in different parts of our lives. What I am trying to show you is that departure is a part of what completion looks like, and we have to be willing to walk toward it when the moment arrives rather than hold on past the point where it becomes a problem.
The mission becomes theirs the moment you are no longer there to carry it for them. The work becomes real the moment you step away. That is the final move of execution. Are you still standing in the way of it?
Prompt
Where are you still present in a way that prevents others from carrying what you have built? What would it look like to take one step toward the departure that completion requires?
Practice: Begin Stepping Away
Identify one piece of work you have been carrying that should be standing on its own by now. This week, take one concrete step toward removing yourself from the center of it. Decline the meeting you have always attended. Let someone else send the message. Stop being copied on the email thread. The practice is in beginning to see what stands when you are no longer there to hold it up.
Reminder
Departure is part of completion.
P.S. If you have been carrying work past the point where carrying it has become the problem, this might be your reminder that Jesus ascended forty days after the resurrection. He did not stay. Share this with someone who needs permission to step away from work that has become more theirs than yours.