Jesus' Best Day
If Easter Sunday was the most exciting day of the disciples' lives, for Jesus it was probably the day of Ascension. He, the Creator, who had descended so far and given up so much, was now heading home.
Like a soldier returning across the ocean from a long and bloody war. Like an astronaut shedding his spacesuit to gulp the familiar atmosphere of earth. Home at last.
Jesus' prayer at the Last Supper with his disciples reveals something of this point of view. "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do," Jesus prayed. "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began."
Before the world began! Like an old man reminiscing--no, like the ageless God reminiscing--Jesus, who sat in a stuffy room in Jerusalem, was letting his mind wonder back to a time before the Milky Way and Andromeda.
On an earthly night dark with fear and menace, Jesus was making preparation to return home, to assume again the glory he had set aside.
---From The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey
When Jesus returned after death to vaporize all doubts among the remnant of believers, he tarried a mere forty days before vanishing for good. The time between Resurrection and Ascension was an interlude, nothing more.
If Easter Sunday was the most exciting day of the disciples' lives, for Jesus it was probably the day of Ascension. He, the Creator, who had descended so far and given up so much, was now heading home.
Like a soldier returning across the ocean from a long and bloody war. Like an astronaut shedding his spacesuit to gulp the familiar atmosphere of earth. Home at last.
Jesus' prayer at the Last Supper with his disciples reveals something of this point of view. "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do," Jesus prayed. "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began."
Before the world began! Like an old man reminiscing--no, like the ageless God reminiscing--Jesus, who sat in a stuffy room in Jerusalem, was letting his mind wonder back to a time before the Milky Way and Andromeda.
On an earthly night dark with fear and menace, Jesus was making preparation to return home, to assume again the glory he had set aside.
---From The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey
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