April Minister’s letter

Are you a glass half-full or half-empty sort of person?  Marvin (the paranoid android from Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) was always rather depressed and gloomy.  On one occasion he said “Funny, how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”  Not what you want to hear…..

After 2 years of sickness, death and isolation due to a global pandemic, we were all hopeful of life getting back to normal in 2022 – and then the crisis in Ukraine emerges – a humanitarian disaster that has so dominated the media that all the other world crises have been almost forgotten about.  The writer of Ecclesiastes is also rather gloomy, when they write:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.  (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

It is easy, indeed perhaps a natural response, to become very concerned and downhearted about the state that the world is in but, if the media coverage had existed, would the Viking invasion or the Black Death have seemed any easier than the current times?  Jesus says: You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.  (Matthew 24:6-8)

See to it that you are not alarmed.  That’s not a call to ignore what is going on, but to see it in the context of a bigger picture and, in particular, within the big picture of God’s eternal love and care for us all.  We are called not to be alarmed, not to despair, but to have compassion, to pray, to act in whatever ways we can; we are called to declare that the Kingdom of God is greater than any earthly nation; we are called to declare that sickness and death are defeated; as we emerge from Lent in to Easter, we are called to proclaim that Christ is Risen, Alleluia!

Philip Doddridge, over 250 years ago, wrote these words:

Happy day, O happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away!
He taught me how to watch and pray,
And live rejoicing every day.

May God’s blessing fill your lives with peace and hope as we celebrate again the joy of Easter Morning.

Ian