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Dear Friends,

Again at this time of the year we are drawn to the central element of our faith, namely the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Easter bring us to this point where we must focus again on the extent that God was prepared to go in expressing his love for us. It reminds us that love is not primarily about a warm emotional human feeling, but much more about a rigorous commitment that is prepared to express itself even in the face of tragedy and horror.

Our world has been experiencing such tragedy in concentrated form it would seem in recent months, and in reality people in their every day lives live through such upheaval in many and varied ways. It is easy to blame God, or to ask that piercing question where is God in all of this suggesting that God in some way lies at the heart of the cause. However the only real answer can ever be that God is there with us in the midst of such events.

Easter reminds us that God did not abandon the world when the going got tough, but despite the pressure and the pain, he endured the cross to bring us all through such times offering the hope of the glorious resurrection.

One of the mistakes that we too often make in the protestant tradition is that we tend to skip over the pain and tragedy of the Easter story to highlight the resurrection. However the resurrection can only achieve its true glory in the light of the very real pain and suffering Christ experienced for us.

It is like that for us in our grief too, that we cannot just push the pain aside to 'get on with life.' We must allow ourselves the time to work through that experience of pain to appreciate in full the hope and the expanse of God's love for us.
Charles Wesley captures something of this in his great hymn, And Can it Be, when he writes,
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

May this Easter time be a chance for us all to reflect again on the full expanse of the Christian message of God's abundant love for the world.

Richard