Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Good morning It’s now almost exactly three months since the horrific conflict in Ukraine began. Part of the anxiety is that we still have no idea how or when it will end or who, if anyone, will emerge victorious. That sense of incompleteness gnaws away so that this terrible war has become a constant backdrop to so many aspects of our lives. Human beings like neat and tidy endings. That’s why so much enjoyment can be found in novels and films where every plot-line is tied up and every mystery revealed. The trouble is that in reality there is rarely such a thing as resolution. Part of the human condition is living with uncertainty and incompleteness with all the intense frustration that carries. I remember my grandfather in the last days of his life complaining bitterly that, because of his impending death, he would never see how things worked out for his family members. Well he could have lived for a thousand years and he would still have been making the same complaint. Perhaps that’s why the Feast of the Ascension which Christians keep at this time of year has always been such an attractive one, marked across the globe with such rejoicing. It offers that most satisfying thing of all which is an ending. On Ascension Day Christians celebrate because the body of Jesus Christ has returned to be with the Father. He has gone ahead to prepare a place for us and so the story of his time on earth has concluded. All nice and neat. Or is it? Because this is a feast that offers more than just an ending. It can also offer a way of living with uncertainty. He may have ascended, but Jesus hasn’t left the world. Rather Christians believe he is present in a different way, present through the lives of his followers who are called to emulate his self-giving love. His hands are now the hands of those who follow him. It is exactly that combination of future hope and contemporary purpose that is giving so many Ukrainian Christians such strength right now. Ascensiontide may be a time of joyful celebration for the churches. But it’s also a season that can ask interesting questions for others in this uncertain and unpredictable world. If everything is contingent, provisional and transient what can we depend on? Where can people go to seek security? Maybe something which can appear fragile is the most dependable of all. Perhaps the thing we human beings can most fully trust is the power of self-giving love.