Dear Friends,

 

T.S.Eliot began one of his poems with the words ‘April is the cruellest month.’ We can, of course, see how true that may be in the natural world, when a sudden cold snap can damage tender young shoots and buds that have bravely appeared in the garden. We thought spring had arrived, but nature still had a burst of bitter wintry weather to throw at us. The exquisite flowers of the magnolia are spoilt with brown bruises, and the delicate blossom of almond and cherry is buffeted by harsh storms.

 

But in a more general sense it may be true too – that too often the promise of a bright future is cruelly dashed by unexpected events. A longed for child is born with congenital abnormalities, which will bring lifelong problems; a chance accident may change the course of a life for ever, bringing with it the challenge of living each day with disability; or it may mean a diagnosis which cruelly cuts short the plans we were making for what should have been the carefree years of leisure and retirement.

 

Then it is that in difficult, even tragic situations, human beings somehow have to learn to adapt to these changed circumstances. Recently I read about a fit young man, a tree surgeon, who fell out of a tree and broke his back, with the result that he is now paralysed from the waist down. He remembers thinking, after the accident, that ‘Everything in my life had turned upside down and disappeared’.   He has written a book about the experience – ‘Looking Up: A Humorous and Unflinching Account of Learning to Live again with Sudden Disability’. The very title tells you something of the spirit in which he has set about this challenge; I found it moving to read about the way he has learned in new ways to be a husband and father and to live a purposeful way, in spite of tragedy. I see a similar spirit of a determination to cope in a positive way with the unthinkable whenever I go up to the children’s hospice at Charlton Farm: I am constantly amazed by the courage and cheerfulness of both parents and children, and the matter of fact way in which they set about making the best of what life has thrown at them. It puts any grumbles I may have firmly into perspective. ‘Making the most of short and precious lives’ is the slogan up there, and it certainly sums up the approach of Charlton farm and those who go there.

 

In these post-Easter days, I often think about what it must have been like for those friends of  Jesus after his death. True, we have those wonderful accounts of his resurrection, which were the basis of all the preaching of the early Christians – a message which was so compelling that thousands came to believe in this new faith, and the Church, of which we are a part today was born. But their lives had been changed for ever – events had turned out very differently from their earlier expectations, and they had to adapt in huge ways for a future which was a whole new challenge. And the risen Lord who came back to them, having come through the horrors of Good Friday, bore the scars of that great suffering.

The resurrection didn’t take away the awfulness of what had happened – but it gave them a different perspective from which to face the future, and it gave them strength to face whatever lay ahead, because they knew now that the powers of darkness and death had been defeated. But what a way to learn….

 

To all those who have to adapt to new and difficult circumstances – take courage.