Yesterday, May 10, was the celebration of the Ascension, according to the church calendar. This day recalls when the risen Jesus spoke his final words to his disciples and "was taken up." In the book of Acts, Luke says "he took him from their eyes."

That phrase, "from their eyes," is very significant. It marks the time when Jesus' disciples no longer followed him by sight, but by faith. They now tell others that their Lord is very much alive and present, albeit invisible. In the ancient world, to say that someone is present but not visible was not a problem. But it is in our modern world.

In the age of the enlightenment, we have reduced what is "real" to what can be intuited by our senses. It has been said that we can't know what we can't touch, taste, smell, hear or see. Thankfully, we live in a time when this is changing. Astrophysicists, neuroscientists, psychologists, analytic philosophers, among others are now affirming what the ancients always knew: there is a deeper and higher reality than what we can intuit by sense.

The ascension of Jesus Christ teaches us this. Jesus ascends beyond what we can imagine. But he also directs us to go deeper into the world. Jesus ascends so that he might be more fully present to people of every time and place.

We know there is more than what meets the eye, as the saying goes. Remembering the ascension, let us attend to the present Christ in the heights and the depths--and all the places in between.

Peace,