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Dear Friends,
By the time many of you receive this, Holy Week and Easter Sunday will have passed but, of course, Easter Sunday is only the start of the Easter Season which continues until Ascension Day on the 9th May.
As always seems to happen at this time of year the weather doesn’t know what it wants to do, one moment you think Spring has finally come, and then it turns cold again. Yet the spring flowers are starting to appear in the gardens, heralding new life.
Over the Easter holiday we usually have some of our family to stay and when we get together, as we sit around the fire of an evening, we join with Lesley’s mum in trying to complete the simple Times Crossword.
Sometimes they are very straight forward and before we can wade in she has completed them in a very short order. But on other occasions she gets stuck, and we dive in to bail her out. Occasionally we discover the problem is that one word in wrong and, when we solve it, all the others fall into place (although sometimes we have to resort to the help of Google).
Sometimes it’s like that with people. We can’t understand why someone is behaving in a particular way: then we learn something about their background or their problems, or their future hopes and plans, and everything makes sense.
On that first Good Friday, the disciples must have felt that nothing made sense any longer. They thought they had sorted out the puzzle about Jesus: he was the Messiah and surely very soon he would show his power, drive out the Romans and set up a new and just kingdom centred on Jerusalem. And then he was arrested and put to death as a common criminal, and their world fell apart.
The key was discovered by some of them on that first Easter Sunday. The missing word for them was “Resurrection” and suddenly everything he had taught them, and everything he had said and done, all took on a new light and they could begin to sort out exactly who Jesus was and what it all meant.
Because Easter is about much more than just chocolate, however welcome it might be – especially if we have given it up for Lent! Easter is the festival when we remember Jesus’ death by Crucifixion, his burial, and that God Resurrected him from the dead. Eggs do act as symbols of new life, which is why we have them at Easter, with the symbol of a broken egg reminding us of how Jesus broke out of death into a new resurrection life.
As a Christian I am convinced that through his death and resurrection Jesus has brought about a whole new start for us all with God who created us. In a world full of sadness, difficulty, pain and despair, the Easter message tells us that in God, through Jesus Christ, there is comfort, new life and hope for us all. The Easter message also tells us that death is NOT the last word and that we too have the hope of the resurrection to eternal life with all our loved ones who have gone before us.
May the Risen Lord Jesus fill your hearts and lives with his peace and his love this Eastertide and always.
Love
Let us pray:
O Lord Jesus Christ,
through your rising again hope has been renewed,
joy has been restored
and life has been re-created for this whole world.
Give us grace in this season of celebration
to rise to you in our hearts,
that with prayer and song we may re-echo
that hymn of joy which your Easter began,
O Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
PRAYER CORNER
Come now, turn aside for a while from your daily employment, escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside your weighty cares, let your burdensome distractions wait, free yourself for a while for God and rest awhile in him. Enter the inner chamber of your soul, shut out everything except God and that which can help you in seeking him, and when you have shut the door, seek him. Now, my soul, say to God, ‘I seek your face; Lord it is your face that I seek.’ Amen.
Anselm (1033-1109)
Please pray--
For the WILD-er Church and ECO Church initiatives
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Safeguarding means enabling those who are affected to live safely, free from any kind of abuse or neglect. It is about people and organizations working together to prevent and reduce both the risks and actual experience of abuse in all of its forms.
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