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Good morning. David Cameron’s resolved that, since he’s no longer Prime Minister, he’s not going to hang around as an MP getting under his successor’s feet. He’s concluded, in the words of one of his predecessors, that when the curtain falls it’s time to get off the stage. Because he’s only 49 it’s too early to use the word ‘retirement’; and there’s much speculation about what his new career might be. But this isn’t just about one politician – and the circumstances vary widely: a lot of people at around that age find that the cult of youth, or the physical demands of their work, or the sense that their face no longer fits, mean their best days seem to be behind them. If you’ve spent the previous 30 years aspiring to more and better, success and recognition, that’s a sobering, even horrifying, moment. We hide such a realisation from ourselves with layers of self-deception. We say, ‘I don’t think they could cope without me.’ Or we think, ‘I want to get things to such a place that my successor can’t ruin it.’ But beneath our stories the truth may be more like this: ‘If I don’t go to work, I don’t know who I am – all I have left is the unresolved issues in my home, the mirror of my own mortality, and a lot less money coming in to make either more palatable.’ The stories of Jesus’ ascension into heaven are about recognising that, whether or not his ministry on earth had turned out as expected, it was finished. Whether one believes Jesus’ ministry was genuinely completed and sufficient perhaps names the line between faith and unfaith. But the point is, even Jesus realised his prominent public role wasn’t going to last indefinitely. Even he had to imagine the fervid drama of being at the centre of events being behind him. At the end of the ascension story, a stranger asks the disciples, ‘Why do you stand looking up to heaven?’ In other words, there’s no use spending a whole lot of energy cherishing glories and licking wounds – dwelling on what’s gone. You may have retired or been sacked at work, but you haven’t resigned as a person. The role we take on as teacher, bus driver, priest or software engineer never exhausts what it means to be a human being. It’s seldom wise to cling on to the bitter end. To do so is to close our eyes to the fresh understandings, new friendships, and enriching challenges that lie in letting go. When the stranger chides the disciples about looking vainly to the skies, he’s challenging them about where their hope truly lies. He’s saying ‘Maybe the best is yet to come.’ He’s meaning, ‘Trust me, the future is always bigger than the past.’