Ascension Day: be preoccupied with the earth, not the sky

On this Ascension Day, some insightful comments from John Stott's BST exposition of Acts 1:11 (p. 50f).

 Laudario of Sant’Agnese (14th C)

"... the angels implied, until Christ comes again, the apostles must get on with their witness, for that was their mandate. There was something anomalous about their gazing into the sky when they had been commissioned to go to the ends of the earth. It was the earth not the sky that was to be their preoccupation. Their calling was to be witnesses not stargazers. The vision they were to cultivate was not upwards in nostalgia to the heaven that had received Jesus, but outwards in compassion to a lost world which needed him. It is the same for us...

"The remedy for unprofitable  spiritual stargazing lies in a Christian theology of history, an understanding of the order of events in the divine programme.  First, Jesus returned to heaven (Ascension). Secondly, the Holy Spirit came (Pentecost). Thirdly, the church goes out to witness (Mission). Fourthly, Jesus will come back (Parousia). Whenever we forget one of theses events, or put them in the wrong sequence, confusion reigns. We need especially to remember that between the ascension and the Parousia, the disappearance and the reappearance of Jesus, there stretches a period of unknown length which is to be filled with the church's world-wide, Spirit-empowered witness to him. We need to hear the implied message of the angels: 'You have seen him go. You will see him come. But between that going and coming there must be another. The Spirit must come, and you must go - into the world for Christ.'"