Looking out, not up

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Acts 1: 11a

Angels ask the disciples a very pointed question above: why do you look for the physical Jesus who is no longer here? You are to look for Jesus, the Christ, in the world now, in all that you see, know, and do. We don’t have the benefit of ever having seen the physical Jesus, in the flesh, but we do have the opportunity to see Christ in everyone and everything. We have been given the great gift of Jesus’ living: his teachings, his compassion, sacrifice, and the life of salvation in Resurrection. Now we must translate the beauty of God’s great gift in Christ by living the life of Jesus now, in the world that is today.

I look at the world and forget sometimes that it belongs to God, not to me. Spring is finally here (thanks be to God) and Farmington is swathed in green, flowers, and bees are flitting about. And even when the pollen threatens to overwhelm me the connection between spring and the renewal of all things is not lost on me. We all know that the world has a lot of ugliness which threatens to bring us down. But the created world and all that is in it should remind us that God not only loves us but provides for us. The world in which we live can either be a reminder of the greatest darkness or the most unrelenting light. How we see the world is up to us. Do we see it through God’s lens, seeing Christ in all things? Do we tend to see the misshapen ways of humanities’ worst impulses and focus on that? Do we spend too much time thinking of heaven and not enough on how alive Jesus is in the world, here and now? The answers are up to us. Jesus is “the Resurrection and the life.” We have our life, now, before us. Let us adore and worship God by seeing the world as God sees it and living into that reality today.