On one occasion, while [Jesus] was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
So when they met together, they 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."
Acts 1:4-8
We really just have no clue, do we? Here we see Jesus, after He has already risen from the dead, telling the disciples to hang around Jerusalem in order to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The disciples are thinking that this is when the kingdom of God will become a reality over all the earth, yet here we are, 2000 years later, and that still has not happened. They were way off in their guess. Additionally, I can assume pretty assuredly that they had a wrong picture of what that might look like (as we likely do now too). And this idea of "baptized with the Holy Spirit" must not have made any sense to them. They were completely clueless and I'm not sure that we're much different 2000 years later.
I think this teaches us two main things. First off, we need to trust God to provide all of the answers and that He has a plan for this broken world, since we have trouble grasping many of these concepts. Secondly, we are called to be witnesses, as it says at the end. Let's think about this idea of witness in the domain of a court room. A witness is called upon solely to present what they have seen and know to be true based on their experiences. They are not called to judge right or wrong, there is a jury for that. They are not called to say what the future will hold, there is a judge for that. They are not called to convince anyone of what the truth is, there is a lawyer for that. Witnesses just say what they have seen.
In a letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, "When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Cor. 2:1-2) Paul was intentionally clueless to everything but what he had witnessed in Christ Jesus, because nothing else really mattered.
So may our cluelessness lead us not into despair, but rather to trust more fully in God and to be obedient in what we do know. May we be witnesses of what we have seen.
