How We Got to Be Who We Are

The Christian church, our church, was born in Judea, in the city of Jerusalem. The birth occurred in (or near) the year 33AD. It was spring time; it was the time of the annual celebration of the Hebrew holiday of Pentecost. Jesus' disciples were in Jerusalem not only to celebrate Pentecost but because this is where they were when they were last with Jesus and Jesus had told them to remain there until He sent them the help they would need to implement His plan for us. We don't know exactly why the disciples were at this particular location or what they were doing but we can certainly speculate. Maybe they were preparing a meal for the Pentecost celebration, or maybe just sitting around and talking about the amazing events that had taken place over the past few weeks, the events surrounding Jesus their leader, friend, Messiah who was crucified, buried and resurrected. They were certain about all the events leading up to the resurrection because they personally observed them. They were also certain of the resurrection of Jesus because since that day they had seen Him, touched Him and listened to Him speak They probably didn't understand all of these amazing things that had happened but they could surely testify that the events had happened. It is also possible that they were discussing the resurrection events and trying to put the pieces together. I can imagine that there were some mixed feelings among the disciples. Some must have felt great joy because they knew that Jesus was no longer dead. Others must have felt great sadness because He was not with them. We can also imagine that some of them were still talking about Jesus' final instructions to them and of the help that He was going to send them. Some may even have been anticipating that the promised help would come on this day. If so, they were thinking correctly. This was the day that the promised help arrived.