Meditation 2*

You Ascended on High

When You ascended on high,
You took many captives;
You received gifts from/for people,
even from the rebellious—
that You, Lord God,
might dwell there.
Psalm 68:18

Whenever doubt rears its head, it often begins by casting into doubt the Lord’s Ascension into Heaven. The Ascension with its precious comfort must first of all be deleted from one’s spiritual eye. Once that has been accomplished, the cancer of doubt will unnoticeably gnaw deeper and deeper into the soul.

For God’s dear children the above is an incentive to focus their faith with all their energy especially on the Ascension of our Lord. It is not just a matter of intellectually accepting the Ascension, but they need to immerse their souls in this glorious fact and not allow the fountains of consolation that generally flow from it, be blocked.

For the secular mind, the Ascension of Jesus is an insurmountable offence. How is it possible, the unbelieving pseudo-wisdom in us asks, that Jesus would bodily ascend on high, not just three or four meters, but into and beyond the highest clouds? How is it possible that Jesus bodily escaped our atmosphere, where there is no air to breathe and no warmth to keep that body alive? He would have died up there. How can it be, the rationalist skeptic in us asks further, that Jesus went way out into the universe, from where it takes thousands of years for the light of stars to reach us? And how could He in a mere ten days reach beyond those distant stars into Heaven, since ten days after the Ascension we celebrate Pentecost, the day He sent His Spirit? That’s how that cancer of skepticism within us gnaws on and on. How can we with our human minds even comprehend the nature of the Heavens? How can Heaven contain physical bodies? And how could this physical body move through all these Heavens to the highest of all, where there is something like the right hand of the Father where Jesus took His place?

Of course, measured by purely human understanding none of this would be possible; it is all the height of irrationality. For anyone caught up in this chain of reasoning Jesus could not have ascended into Heaven. But if you want to follow this line, you must realize that, according to the same secular reasoning, death spells the end of you with nothing beyond. You get buried in a hole like an animal and there you decompose. Finish! That’s it.

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But to believe, to confess, to jubilate joyfully as a child of God, implies that we do not allow ourselves to be determined and walled in by the limits of our human understanding, for God has burst open those walls. Through the opening in that ancient wall a joyful light descended from above, through which we now see all of reality in a totally different perspective, both things on earth below and in Heaven above.

In that light, we come to see that there is much more power beyond our power. In fact, our power is but a minimal part of the total available power in the universe. Far beyond and above our power and that of nature glitters the mighty majesty of God that breaks into this earthly life with a sovereign power that knows no bounds. With that sovereign power He bends and forces everything to obey His divine ordinances, everything, whether our bodies, the skies, mountains and clouds, the stars and the firmament, warmth and cold, distance and space, in fact all creation without exception.

And then the Son of God comes to earth, that Son of God who has adopted our flesh and blood. He came but not to stay. The Lord God did not intend for Him to stay here, but, without shedding our flesh and blood, to ascend back into Heaven in order from that vantage point to protect God’s Church and to comfort her. There is nothing to restrict His all-encompassing power to deal with His creatures as He wills, not even those factors that seem to make all this talk of Ascension unbelievable and impossible, whether space, distance, the teeming stars, the firmament or atmosphere, or even the law of gravity. All of these are but pseudo-obstacles over against the omnipotence with which He bends them.

For these reasons, a child of God does not calculate those distances, speeds and possibilities. When it pleases God to assign a creature of His to exceptional tasks or to stretch them beyond their normal limits, there is nothing to prevent Him. Then all your normal data and statistics surrender themselves, while all your laboratory paraphernalia suddenly become useless and all you have left is to stare into this holy arena with your faith that empowers your penetrating gaze to see these spiritual verities.

When you fall on your knees, this gaze in faith carries you quick as lightning, within one heartbeat, from your prayer room to the Lord in Heaven. Then you are in the presence of your Jesus, in Whom you recognize the Lamb that was slain, and you worship Him with a love that melts your soul.

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At that point all annoying objections disappear and human understanding has nothing further to contribute. Faith has rendered it speechless; it is now faith that speaks. Through

this faith Jesus’ ascension has become such an indubitable and certain fact, that you can see Him in His majesty, that you can as it were point Him out to others. You can see that for all these 2000 years He has from Heaven revived, saved and comforted His loved ones day and night.

This is the miracle: While others see nothing fall from Heaven, those with the eye of faith see the manna of the soul come down, liberally spread out by Jesus over His Church. Just as Jesus at one time saw satan fall down from Heaven like lightning, while others saw nothing, so do those with an awakened soul see the soft rains of grace dripping down from day to day on the shriveled soul. They no longer have to ask whether Jesus has ascended into Heaven, for they experience every morning and evening that Jesus is in Heaven and from there blesses them.

There will be moments when even a believer does not see it, but those are evil moments during which the veil of sin covers his eyes. However, as soon as that veil has been removed, see, Jesus is there again together with His angels, and grace once again pours down upon him. Does it really require proof that there is a sun in that sky, when I am enjoying its light and bask in it? Similarly, do you really expect me to prove Jesus’ Ascension, when I feel His loving warmth stream over me and can taste that it comes from Him?

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It is when your soul is separated from Immanuel that it constantly blinds you to His Ascension. That happens when things go awry with you by moving out of Immanuel’s orbit and you try to connect with God on your own by skirting Jesus. But when you know yourself to be incorporated with Him into one unity, a living member of His living Body through that mystical, wonderful living relationship in the Spirit, ah, then there is no distance, then your prayer rises up to Him constantly and His gifts descend on you every moment.

Then that Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:12) once again connects you, along which your soul rushes to meet Him, while His messengers of love rush down towards you. Everything is inspired, animated, full of salvific splendour and shimmering with godly life.

There you have it: via Jesus’ Ascension, both earth and Heaven become one in the deepest vision of your soul.

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And should there be a time when the light in your soul’s eye dims, when guilt, sin, unrighteousness and all sorts of idolatries and images or a mountain of pride block your prayers, then you can still sense in the dark of night those prayers of that supreme Prayer Warrior above, Who pleads on your behalf. He pleads first of all that the gift of prayer be restored to you.

If that pleading prayer for you were to cease for even one moment, you would no longer share in His salvation. The pleading of your High Priest Jesus is the foundation on which your hope rests. It is on that basis that you entrust yourself when you lay down to sleep. When you rise in the morning, the pleading prayers of Jesus are once again the ground of your faith and trust so that you can face the struggle of the day before you with courage.

Hence, you can’t do without Jesus’ Ascension. It is woven into your entire spiritual life.

One day, and this remains the anticipation of your soul, you will be up there above with Him who waits for you!