Ascension Day

...On the day Jesus was taken into heaven, the work God sent him to accomplish was finally completed.  The ascension was a living and public declaration of his dying words on the Cross: It is finished. Ascending to heaven, Jesus furthered the victory of Easter—the victory of a physical body in whom God had conquered death.  Because of the ascension, the incarnation is not a past event.  Because of the ascension, we know that the incarnate Christ who was raised from the dead is sharing in our humanity even now.  And just as the men in white informed the disciples, so we carry in our own flesh a guarantee that Christ will one day bring us to himself.  It is for these reasons that N.T. Wright affirms, "To embrace the Ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless."(1)  

Truly, Ascension Day, a holy day falling inconspicuously on a Thursday in May, is the bold declaration that we are not left as orphans.  In the same post-resurrection body he invited Thomas to touch, Jesus is accessible to the world today.  He ascended with a body, he shares in our humanity, extending his own body even now, and he is coming back for those in bodies.  Christ is preparing a room for us, and we know it is real because he himself is real.  Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 114. 

© 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. All Rights Reserved. 


REad the whole thing..