Up

“As they were looking, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.”       Acts 1:9

Whenever the Bible speaks of God and heaven as being “up,” it is using a figure of speech, just as when it says that God walks on the wind, etc.  If God is up above Chicago, for example, His is straight down from Australia.  We talk about the North Pole as “the top of the world,” but the earth has a no more top or bottom than any other ball.

Neither are we to think of heaven as a place surrounding the clouds and the stars like the layers of an onion, so that “up” is over everywhere.  Such sensual ideas are a discredit to Christianity, and they reduce God to space, for Solomon reminds us that even “the heaven of heavens” cannot contain Him.

When the Bible says that God is “up,” it means that He is far above us in power and all other virtues; His thoughts are higher than our thoughts; His care is constantly over us; and we are always under His watchful eye.

As a matter of fact, God is closer to us than our own hands and feet.  We know that the angels are often standing right beside us.  And likely our loved ones in glory surround us “like a cloud of witnesses,” just as TV pictures and radio music fill our rooms constantly, even if we are unable to see or hear them with our natural eyes and ears.

When Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives He did not go up and up until He was lost from sight.  A cloud came between Him and His disciples while He was still comparatively near them, demonstrating by means of an acted-out parable that He, though unseen, is never far away.  If we really thought of this more often it would change our lives radically.