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Ascended
The
harder question is not where you’ve gone,
but why you left us here. The work was done,
disposed
of on the cross—why not remain?
It’s for our sake you went, you said, so that
the
Comforter could be with everyone—
yet isn't there more comfort for us all
to
be with you today in Paradise?
Why leave us here, born into suffering,
dying
in ignorance, while sin plays out
its tragic farce in world and church alike?
What
have we gained by Inquisition,
plague and Holocaust? Silent you watch
Jerusalem—your
love and your despair—
despoiled by Abraham’s family's vicious feud.
What
has taken you—for whom time is nothing—
two more millennia still to prepare?
It
seems your love will not be satisfied
until you live a life out through us all
in
the shambling, disunited parody
we call your body. You're gone, yet still here,
and
we live on in you and you in us—
the one within the one within—within
this
gap of grace and misery between
your resurrection and its consequence.
You
have your reasons. Love underwrites them all.
Faith must be worth a great deal if it costs
so much to harvest such a small amount.
Written
for
the Ascension Day
service at
© Godfrey Rust 2007, godfrey@wordsout.co.uk. See here for permissions.