Set your Heart on Things Above

A fifth implication of the ascension is that because Jesus has ascended to heaven we should set our minds and hearts on things above not on earthly things. This is what Colossians 3:1-3 urges us to do:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

There is a saying that goes, "You are so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good." Whoever came up with that saying apparently knew someone who did nothing but sit around all day thinking about heaven while forsaking their responsibilities here on earth. But actually, if you are heavenly minded in the right way, the opposite will be the result: you will do earthly good. C. S. Lewis explains it this way in a chapter on "Hope" in Mere Christianity....

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more – food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.

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Will Vaus

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