Voyager 1 ascended into space in the year in which I was in the lower sixth form at school. Ever since then it has been travelling further and further from our planet and sending back images which have enhanced human understanding of things God knows and sees. By the time my son was the age I was when Voyager was launched it left our solar system altogether and still is journeying on. Soon it will run our of power and although it will keep journeying on, contact will be lost forever. I wonder where it will be when my grandson is seventeen.
Today we remember a very different sort of Ascension. Jesus was about half the age I am now when he returned to be at his father’s side in glory forever. Luke 24 records: “50 When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.”
Two thousand and more years later we still praise and worship God for the risen and ascended Christ. Unlike Voyager 1, the ascended, glorified Son of God does not grow ever more remote but instead he is constantly manifest for those who would see him and know his presence. Like Voyager, through Jesus we have pictures that enable us to have some understanding of the nature and ways of God that are, however, known better to him than to us. There is a point beyond which we cannot hope to go in our comprehension of the Divine until it is our turn to claim the inheritance of faith and take our own places in his eternity.
A Prayer:
Cosmic God you are all knowing and omnipresent You see us and love us, drawing us ever closer to you until the day dawns when we will be at one in your eternity. We thank you for that magnificent hope and for our faith which enables us to know the truth of the things we hope for, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.