{"id":21358,"date":"2017-04-17T00:10:32","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T07:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lccredding.com\/lcc\/?p=10602"},"modified":"2017-04-17T00:10:32","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T07:10:32","slug":"april-17-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2017\/04\/17\/april-17-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"April 17, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“Men of Galilee,” they said, “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.”<\/em> Acts 1:11<\/span><\/p>\n

Return<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

A Mini Devotional<\/span><\/em><\/h4>\n

We had recently shared the story of Jesus’ Ascension with a group of young children, and as an object lesson, we were releasing a white latex balloon with a picture of Jesus’ face taped onto it. We had carefully explained to the children that the balloon was not REALLY Jesus, of course, but that we were using it as a way to help them see with their eyes what the disciples had witnessed.<\/span><\/p>\n

We went outside and the children, watching as the balloon was released, pointed and squinted up into the bright sky waving their little arms and shouting, “Good bye, Jesus!” “Don’t go, Jesus!” “Come back soon, Jesus!” The children watched until the balloon was the tiniest speck. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I can imagine the disciples doing the same thing while their hearts cried the words these children were shouting; my heart joins in, too!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJesus, we long for Your return! Amen.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, Who has been […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-5yu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}