FEAST OF THE ASCENSION
‘Now as He blessed them He withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven’
As Jesus ascended into heaven He blessed His friends and then they let Him go. Life is like that. As we move from one stage to the next we must bless what has been and let it go in order to embrace fruitfully what has yet to be. Consequently, we move from childhood to the middle years to old age; from home to school to the world of work to retirement. While each stage brings its joys and successes, it also brings its’ sorrows and failures. We must avoid the temptation to ‘nurse’ the hurts and wounds of the past. We are products of the past, but we don’t need to be prisoners of it. If we want to fly, we have to give-up what weighs us down. We would do well to be guided rather, by the spirit of the old adage: ‘forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you’. Holding-on is believing that there is only a past; letting-go is knowing that there is a future and that is true freedom. The friends of Jesus would come to understand.