Looking Up, Looking Out: Reflections for Ascension

Ascension Day often slips us by. There’s no meal like Maundy Thursday, no mourning like Good Friday, no flowers or fanfare like Easter morning. Just a strange, luminous scene: Jesus on a hilltop, speaking final words to his friends, then lifted out of their sight.

What was it like to be there? The dust of the Mount of Olives still clinging to your sandals. The wind shifting suddenly, as if creation itself held its breath. And then — the impossible — your teacher, your friend, rising above the tree line, his body becoming sky. 

They must have been stunned. After all the trauma and triumph of the past weeks — betrayal, crucifixion, empty tomb, a string of mysterious reappearances — now this? Another goodbye?

Surely some part of them wanted to cry out, “Wait! Not again.”
Surely some part of us still does.

Because we know that feeling too — the moment God seems to slip from view. We know the ache of uncertainty, the silence after a high point, the “now what?” that follows a season of joy or positive change or transformation. Like the disciples, we’re caught in the in-between: Jesus has risen, but the world is still wounded. The promise is real, but not fully realized. The kingdom is here — and yet not yet.

That’s the tension of Ascension: Jesus has gone, but not abandoned us. He reigns, but not from a distance. His feet have left the ground, but his Spirit remains.

And in that tension — that holy disorientation — we are invited not to despair, but to live faithfully in the meantime.

The angels’ question is still for us:
"Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?"
Don’t just wait. Witness. Don’t just watch. Act.

The work of the kingdom isn’t on pause. It’s in our hands now — not by our own strength, but through the Spirit Jesus promised would come.

This year, Ascension Day invites us to stand with those first followers in the tension between grief and hope, absence and presence, waiting and moving. To feel the ache, yes — but also to trust that we are not alone.

So yes, look up — but then look out.
Christ is risen, ascended, and alive in the world.
The story isn’t over.