From Season to Season

As they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” —Acts 1:9-11 In her novel  Gilead , Marilyn Robinson shares the story of Reverend John Ames who, looking back on a life of pastoral service, love, loss, faith, and hope, tells his young son: Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. For example, whenever I take a child into my arms to be baptized, I am, so to speak, comprehended in the experience more fully, having seen more of life, knowing better what it means to affirm the sacredness of the human creature. I believe there are visions that come to us only i...

In her novel, Gilead , Marilynne Robinson shares the fictional autobiography of Reverend John Ames who, looking back on a life of pastoral service, love, loss, faith, and hope, tells his young son: Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. For example, whenever I take a child into my arms to be baptized, I am, so to speak, comprehended in the experience more fully, having seen more of life, knowing better what it means to affirm the sacredness of the human creature. I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect. The New Testament is the story of the expanding vision of the early Church. Having lived alongside Jesus, Mary, the Apostles, and all of Jesus’ followers had to discern what his life, death, resurrection, and return to the Father revealed about who Jesus was and what God was asking of each of them and of the Church. But, the New Testament also shows us that this process...