Tomorrow is Ascension Day. Although the language in the Bible is meant to help us to understand what happened on this special day, some people find it misleading and confusing. The picture portrayed is of Jesus going up into heaven to be with God at the end his earthly mission and leaving the human scene for good. However, in reality heaven isn’t up there and far away from us: it’s another sphere, another plane, that is all around us.

What the record of the event is really telling us is that as a human being, having accomplished everything in this world that God the Father wanted him to achieve, Jesus disappears as a flesh and blood person and soon after, at Pentecost, his Spirit appears and becomes active in the world. In the form of the Holy Spirit Jesus is no longer confined to the limits of time or space but is available to everyone everywhere. Moreover, Jesus’s work didn’t come to an end on Ascension Day: through his spirit he continues to work in the world today. The Ascension therefore didn’t mark the end of the story, but only the end of the chapter!

Today, Jesus wants us to open our lives up to his spirit so that he can work powerfully through each and every one of us. We don’t have to be super-good or perfect, since he works through flawed and fragile men and women who acknowledge his presence with them and within them.

This week’s thought: Seek and you will find.