Carried Away

I just got home from a brief trip to Las Vegas, a gift to my daughter as a belated 21st birthday present. I have never been to Vegas, and it was quite an experience. I don't gamble. Rarely drink, and usually champagne if at all. I don't shop at high-end expensive shops like Gucci and Versace. I do love Broadway shows and we saw two. I also love the desert air, and it was wonderful. But I got completely carried away by two things: Hoover Dam and people watching. I'd always seen pictures of Hoover Dam, but never have been there. It is such a magnificent testimony not only to human ingenuity, but also to the role government can and should play in a crisis. It was a WPA project in the Depression and put thousands of people back to work in it the 1930's and early 1940's in its construction. A magnificent sight, to be sure. I also got carried away watching people come and go from various perches around Vegas: lunch at the grand hotels, on the sidelines in the casinos, walking up and down the strip. I saw lots of other people "carried away" by booze, drugs, solicitation, overindulgence, overspending, and of course, losses at the gaming tables. You name the human sin, and Vegas has an opportunity for it -- in spades. It dawned on me that Jesus got carried away, too. Literally, on a cross. Literally, up from a grave. Literally, up into heaven on that mountaintop after his resurrection. This Sunday is Ascension Sunday, when we remember that this Incarnate Son of God got carried away, back to the place from which he had come. But he left one thing as a great act of trust: us. He placed the future of his Reign in this world in the hands of disciples who, on any given day, get carried to places we dare not even imagine. Yet, that is what he did, with the great assurance of his final words: "I am with you until the end of time."
When have you been "carried away"? Talk amongst yourselves . . . and come to worship on Sunday, when we'll celebrate this Feast in style and remembrance.
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