I’ve probably read the phrase, “after his suffering . . . ” a thousand times. It’s in Acts (1:3) and I’m church of Christ, so, it’s not like I haven’t rummaged around in that part of the Bible. But I don’t think I ever noticed it until this week. Like the way you don’t notice a crack in the sidewalk that leads to your front porch. You know it’s there, but you don’t see it anymore. You just step over it. Maybe you’re in a hurry to get out to the mailbox or back into the house. Maybe you don’t want to mess with trying to fix it — how do you fix a crack in concrete anyway — so you don’t look at it. For whatever reasons, it’s virtually invisible. But this week, I saw it. The verse I mean. Specifically, those three words. “After his suffering.”
Luke, the author of the eponymous Gospel and the Book of Acts, is not known for brevity. His Gospel is the longest book in the New Testament. Acts, his sequel and the current subject of an NBC television series, wins the silver medal in verbosity. With just two books, Luke wrote about 5,000 more words than Paul, who penned at least 13. Yet Luke summarizes the events of that awful Thursday, Friday and Saturday and the glorious, Earth-shaking resurrection of Sunday, with seven syllables — in Greek or English. It’s not like he doesn’t want to talk about it. Every sermon in Acts — and there are around 19 of them — mentions the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus in one way or another.
Maybe this time he was in a hurry to get to the good part. The part where Jesus “showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.” But one thing Luke is never in is a hurry. He lingers longer at the manger and takes a more circuitous route to the cross than any of the other writers. I’m probably making too much of it, which is a temptation to which preachers, bloggers and commentators are particularly susceptible. So now that I think about it, Luke’s rather economic summary isn’t as loaded as it appears. But it is Holy Spirit inspired and God never has been one to waste words.
Loaded or not, that phrase hit the target with me this week. I am, too much of the time, as oblivious to the influences of our culture as a fish is to the water that surrounds it. Every day, I swim through the suppositions, values and conventions of the world, undiscerning of how they have seeped into my soul.
The phrase, “after his suffering,” questions my expectations of an easy Christianity, one that is 
more acquainted with blessing than cross-bearing, more prepared for prosperity than persecution, more assuming of God’s affirmative answers to my prayers than His divine denials. “After his suffering,” confronts me with the painful truth that this Way sometimes leads through hard places — places shaped like a skull or cross.
The phrase, “after his suffering,” indicts my addiction to convenience. From where I am at this very moment, I can hit a driver and a wedge to a grocery store, yet still I am tempted to try out online grocery shopping with delivery. (The fact that I immediately went to a recreational analogy to highlight my proximity to provision — and that you, even if you’re not a golfer — understood it, says volumes.) There is no sin in wishing for a more convenient way to manage the necessities of life. But convenience permeates like vapor, diffusing itself into every nook and cranny of our souls. “After his suffering,” reminds me that the Way sometimes means embracing the inexpedient, accepting the unseasonable and gracefully enduring the arduous.
“After his suffering,” stops my incessant clock-watching, my secret wishes for a time machine, my fallen desire to be master and commander of my schedule. All by itself, the word, “after,” is an affront to my have-it-right-this-very-minute mindset. “After his suffering,” turns me away from the urgent and back to the eternal. It reminds me that in the Way, anticipation is often better than an immediacy, that the eventual is more substantial than the critical.
“The world is too much with us,” wrote Wordsworth. Or maybe we are too much with the world. Our powers are laid waste by hopes of ease, addictions to convenience and the rush, rush, rush of the digital seconds incessantly ticking in our heads. The Way is different than this world. Longer, harder, slower. But better.