The words of the famed...
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The words of the famed French intellectual Blaise Pascal well describe the sense of meaninglessness many Americans feel: "I see the terrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast experience without knowing why I have been put in this place rather than that, or why the brief span of life allotted to me should be assigned to one moment rather than another of all the eternity which went before me and will come after me. I see only infinity on every side hemming me in like an atom or like the shadow of a fleeting instant. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least about is this very death which I cannot evade" (Pensees, p. 158).
In the midst of this sense of terror, the feeling that all life is chaotic and meaninglessness, the ascension of Christ reminds us that the created order is now under Christ's lordship. Modern theologian Paul Tillich explained the ascension in a way to illustrate this point, about the confidence we may have that in all life's ebb and flow there is order and the love of Christ: "The symbol then means that God's creativity is not separated from the new being in Christ" (Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, p. 162). Life, the created order, the cosmos run according to what Jesus shows us about God. The world is a friendly place.
Martin Luther King Jr. makes a similar point: "Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime." These insights make us life-affirmers, bold adventurers in life, no longer fearful of death, for immersed in life and even in death we find Christ there. Famed Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin compellingly describes this joyful vision of life that the ascension proclaims: "To attain to him [Christ] and become merged into his life I have before me the entire universe with its noble struggles, its impassioned quests, its myriads of souls to be healed and made perfect. I can and I must throw myself into the thick of human endeavor, and with no stopping for breath. For the more fully I play my part and the more I bring my efforts to bear on the whole surface of reality, the more also will I attain to Christ and cling close to him" (Hymn of the Universe, p. 54).
In the midst of this sense of terror, the feeling that all life is chaotic and meaninglessness, the ascension of Christ reminds us that the created order is now under Christ's lordship. Modern theologian Paul Tillich explained the ascension in a way to illustrate this point, about the confidence we may have that in all life's ebb and flow there is order and the love of Christ: "The symbol then means that God's creativity is not separated from the new being in Christ" (Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, p. 162). Life, the created order, the cosmos run according to what Jesus shows us about God. The world is a friendly place.
Martin Luther King Jr. makes a similar point: "Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime." These insights make us life-affirmers, bold adventurers in life, no longer fearful of death, for immersed in life and even in death we find Christ there. Famed Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin compellingly describes this joyful vision of life that the ascension proclaims: "To attain to him [Christ] and become merged into his life I have before me the entire universe with its noble struggles, its impassioned quests, its myriads of souls to be healed and made perfect. I can and I must throw myself into the thick of human endeavor, and with no stopping for breath. For the more fully I play my part and the more I bring my efforts to bear on the whole surface of reality, the more also will I attain to Christ and cling close to him" (Hymn of the Universe, p. 54).
