The Ache of Jesus’ Absence: Learning to Long
Author: Laurie Norris
May 15, 2025
Bob and I have three dogs. For them, every minute apart from us is sheer torture. If we are gone five minutes to get the mail, it’s like we were gone a week! They stare at the door and lie against the threshold when we leave, awaiting our return with eager anticipation. No matter how long it has been, whether five minutes or five days, they are always overjoyed when we walk through the door.
When is the last time you truly longed for something and let yourself sit in the reality of that longing—embracing the discomfort of hunger, the unsettled restlessness of loneliness, the ache of unmet desire, without:
- running to the refrigerator or pulling up your Door Dash app to satisfy your craving for Chipotle
- or clicking on the Amazon link for next-day delivery
- or pulling up one of your multiple social media apps for an instant conversation
- or scrolling YouTube or TikTok videos to fill a moment of boredom?
How often do we wait? In our human finitude, fallenness, and present exile, we are created to long for something more. However, in this age of instant gratification, I wonder if we have forgotten how to long—to experience a deeper, aching, perhaps even agonizing, kind of hunger and desire. It’s like an unused muscle, and we are increasingly malformed. What of our longing for Christ?
The account of Jesus’ ascension appears only in Luke’s writings, as a hinge between the Gospel (Luke 24) and Acts (Acts 1). We speak much of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We speak of Jesus sending His Spirit. We speak of Jesus’ return. But, aside from reciting the Apostles’ Creed (or acknowledging Ascension Sunday on the church calendar), we speak little of Jesus’ ascension.
What happened in the ascension? Jesus ascended bodily into heaven, where He was exalted and coronated as “Lord.” Acts 2:36 states that God made Him both Lord and Christ in a special sense. He now sits at the Father’s right hand, exercising regal authority and power.
And He ascended to send His Spirit. Jesus sends His Spirit as our Helper in His absence. As Jesus told His disciples in John 16:7, it was better for them that He depart, for He would send the Helper. This is the Spirit of Christ, distinct in person but inseparable from the Son. Fully human, our reigning Lord in our glorified flesh, Jesus now intercedes and advocates for us continually in the presence of His Father as our sympathetic High Priest. And so, we have bold confidence to approach the throne of grace and receive mercy. Through the Spirit who unites us to Christ, we also are seated with Him in heavenly places (Eph. 2:4-7).
So then, the ascension has made Jesus uniquely present. He is with us, in union with us through the indwelling Spirit. Even so, Jesus is also absent. He has departed. Jesus is with us by His Spirit, but He is not presently, bodily with us: “And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:9-11, emphasis added).
He departed from this realm into the presence and dwelling of the Father, through the cloud, just as the Son of Man will come again to reign on the clouds of heaven. Picture that moment. Remember the disciples’ troubled hearts in John 14 when Jesus said they could not follow where He was going. Always the literalists, they had declared, “Then show us the way!” They desperately wanted to be with Jesus and could not fathom any other scenario.
In Matthew 9:14-15, John’s disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus responded, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (emphasis added). Jesus’ disciples would fast after His departure, in part, as a reminder and demonstration of their longing for His return. The departure of Jesus left a real hole for the disciples, a place of longing in their hearts to be physically reunited with Him again, to dwell where He dwells—not a longing for “heaven” in the abstract, but a longing to be with Christ.
So Paul writes in Philippians 1:21-23, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.” Paul longed to be with Christ, but his work was not yet finished.
The Apostle Peter likens this to a betrothed woman during the year of betrothal, awaiting the return of her bridegroom. He writes to those who know their identity as exiles in this world, who long for their eternal inheritance with Christ: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:8-9). What if we longed for Jesus with such purity and simplicity of devotion? (2 Cor. 11:2-3)?
Is it possible that we focus so much on Christ’s presence with us that we don’t feel the deep ache of Jesus’ absence—the sense that something is actually missing and, consequently, the genuine longing for His return? Are we perhaps too comfortable with the present status quo? Jesus’ return will mean little if we fail to grasp the reality of His departure.
We stand between the day of betrothal, in union with Christ, and the day of presentation as holy and blameless before our Bridegroom. The ascension, which the church marks annually on Ascension Sunday—May 29 this year—reminds us that Jesus has departed and will return in the same way He left. We are present with Him by the Spirit but absent from Him in the body. The ascension teaches us to feel the ache of Jesus’ absence. This ache stirs our sense of longing for Jesus, to be reunited with the One we love but have not yet seen. And this longing spurs our present faithfulness.
It is hard to long for someone or something we don’t truly miss. It is hard to long for Christ when we don’t acknowledge or experience the reality of His absence. If we want to cultivate a longing for Christ, we must live in the longing for Christ’s future return, as a faithful bride awaiting her Bridegroom—that is, the longing to be with Christ, face to face (Rev. 21:3; 22:4).
During the Lenten season, which we just observed, we cultivate our spiritual appetites. We give things up for the sake of pursuing something else. We fast to say “no” to the impulses of the flesh and to focus our appetites on communion with God through His Word and prayer. We fast, in part, to stir our sense of need and thirst for Christ. We observe the biblical pattern of fasting before feasting—to experience hunger before we celebrate the feast.
What a countercultural concept in our age of immediate gratification! Fasting is one way to cultivate your longing for Christ. It uses our physical hunger pangs to remind us of our deeper need and hunger for Jesus. With every thought of food, we are pointed to the source of our ultimate nourishment—the Bread of Life, who Himself is our very sustenance.
We are reminded that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3). Figuratively speaking, you will never experience true hunger until you stop eating! So let us enter into longing. Let us train our hearts to long. Let yourself feel hungry, and enter into the discomfort of an empty stomach. Enliven your senses to the things of the Spirit. It is better to be hungry than numb!
Laurie Norris is Dean of Faculty, Undergraduate School, and Professor of Bible at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
Image: The Ascension, John Singleton Copley - abcgallery.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11222497.
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