Dear Friends,

 

Easter will soon be upon us – my favourite season of the Church year, when there aren’t all the commercial distractions of Christmas, and the natural world all around us reflects the new life which is at the heart of the festival.  I hope you will join us in our celebrations – not just the ‘happy part’ on Easter Sunday, but the darker side of it, too, on Good Friday; for to celebrate just the aspects that make us feel good is to deny the essential point of Easter, which is about confronting the reality of sadness and pain, and bringing life out of death. Easter Sunday without Good Friday is meaningless!

 

One of the loveliest Easter hymns is a medieval carol which expresses the difference Easter makes:

 

          Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,

          Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;

          Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

          Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

 

          In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,

          Thinking that never he would wake again,

          Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:

          Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

 

          When our heart are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

          Thy touch can call us back to life again;

          Fields of our hearts, that dead and bare have been:

          Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

 

In a beautiful rural area like our parish, we see signs of new life everywhere at this time of year:

 plenty of young wheat springing green in the fields, and vigorous growth in our gardens.

But how we feel inside might not reflect that new life; we may feel locked into sadness

 from the past, relationships which seem to have died, disappointment that life has not turned

out as we had hoped, the cynicism which refuses to believe that things could be different.

 It doesn’t have to be like that.

 

Easter isn’t just another Bank holiday, it is really a way of life, lived in the light and hope of the

 resurrection. If that story makes no difference to the way we live, then we haven’t properly

absorbed its meaning. So how about looking for those ‘dead and bare’ areas in our lives, and

considering how the story of Easter might stimulate new growth there – new attitudes, fresh

 potential, forgiveness for the past, hope for the future, and the courage to move forward?

 How about making Easter happen for you this year? But you may be in for some surprises;

Just as Mary Magdalene had on that first Easter morning, when the man she had thought to

be the  gardener turned out to be none other than the Lord she thought was dead in the tomb.

For after Easter, anything might happen…..

 

Enjoy your Easter eggs – and maybe one or two of them might hatch into something

 unexpected.

 

Happy Easter,

 

Rosey