New Life! New Hope!

Easter is upon us again! It is the greatest feast in the Christian year, even greater than Christmas. Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection is all about new life. Saint Paul yearns to ‘know Jesus and the power of the resurrection’. This is also the challenge to us!

I think we all need that power, that light, that grace, that glory that Easter bespeaks of. Most of the time, many of us are struggling to see the light. We are often in the tunnel, the tomb sort of. We seek meanings. We strike a match and it brightens the path just long enough to see the next few steps, then we are in the dark again. Easter and belief in the Risen Jesus brighten the life-tunnel with the light of hope and new life. It is the firm faith that we have in the Risen Jesus, not in ourselves or what we ‘have’, that sheds so much light on our dark life-paths!

April also reminds us that Spring is here again! Daffodils, primroses, crocus, hyacinths, tulips, carmellia and so many others are everywhere! New life is everywhere! Life throbs and bursts all around us! Nature itself helps to make the perfect background for the celebration of Easter. The seed that sprouts all around us remind us also of Jesus’ body laid in the tomb and sprouting into new life as Jesus rises from the tomb! “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.” (1 Cor 15. 36) His resurrection inaugurates a new springtime in our lives, that of ‘hope’ beyond the horizon!

April is a month of annual parochial church meetings in the country. Churches everywhere elect Churchwardens, Church officers and Church council members. The generosity and commitment of these Church officers keep our churches gling throughout the land.

Many village churches in Lincolnshire, in neighbouring parishes, and elsewhere in Britain, are working very hard to make the church buildings and church life relevant and useful to the communities in the 21^st century. The time has come for us also to move on to a resurrected Christian experience and testimony and we owe it to our young families, our children and grandchildren. We also owe it to those who generously give of their means to support the work of the Church in our Parish and in the nation.

Yes, Jesus is risen, victorious over sin and death! He is the ‘new life and new hope’ that we all need and long for. But, that begins right here, where we are, when we welcome the risen and merciful Saviour in to our hearts and our life!