I distinctly remember a time I was in high school.  It was in my junior year and gym class.  It was also during the wintertime when the Ohio weather was just too nasty to be outside, which meant it was gymnastics season indoors.  One of the things to do as part of our gymnastics was taking a run at a large spring board which then propelled you over a set of parallel bars that had a wood platform on top of it, cushioned by a small mat, dropping about seven feet or so to the floor on the other side.  You could leap over the bars any way you wanted; most did it as a side stand or open leg stance.  The very brave and foolish, however, did it another way entirely: upon flying off the springboard they would tuck themselves into a forward roll position, thereby approaching the bars upside down, somersaulting over the platform.  The sheer terror of doing it this way lie in the fact that, being upside down curled up in a ball, you couldn't see the bars ahead of you on approach.  And because of that, if by chance you didn't get enough lift off the board, you would fall short of the platform-in a curled up, upside down fetal position.

I saw this once happen to a kid.  He broke bones (including his neck) and an ambulance came and took him away.  But such were the days before child endangerment laws!  They kept the apparatus up anyway.  The thing about it was, once your toes left that board, you were committed to the flight, no matter how it ended up.  In other words, whatever control you might have on the outcome ended at the edge of that springboard.  Once in the air, it was all up to how you set your body and if you didn't have enough lift, that didn't matter at all.  It never crossed my mind to do it.  I didn't want to die or take a chance of becoming paralyzed for life.

One day a kid kept calling me "chicken" and shaming me for not having enough courage to try the upside down roll.  He got others to join in and the pressure was intense.  So, shaking from fear, I paced myself back from the board, ran as fast and hit the board as hard as I could and tucked myself into the curl position.  I saw my feet fall away and the world go upside down.  I was caught in a spin and had no view of the bars ahead of me.  It was just God and me at some point in space, holding my breath, deathly afraid, not a sound to be heard

Discipleship is a lot like that.

 

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

 

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’

So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’