Reflections

March Reflection

Light in a dark world

It’s been a pretty bleak year weather wise so far.  Every morning seems to present us with banks of unremitting black clouds often accompanied by driving rain or a blanket of mist. The weather seems to have really affected people.  People that I meet not only complain about the weather, but tell me that it’s really getting them down. To make it worse the world  seems to be as dark as the weather. Unremitting conflict in Ukraine.  A new dangerous war in the Middle East. War between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The world no longer feels a safe place.

The Easter story also has darkness as one of its themes. It was dark when the authorities arrested Jesus. It was dark when they carried out their rigged trial that ensured he was condemned.  We are told that as he hung in agony on the cross that darkness covered the land for three hours. And it was dark when three days after the crucifixion the women among his followers came to give him a proper burial.  It must have seemed to them that dark Easter morning that the world’s darkness really had obliterated the light. Yet light dawned in the darkness of that early morning.  When they got to the tomb the body was gone. Instead they found angels of light telling them that he had risen from the dead.

With that resurrection Jesus offers us a new story. Life is no longer just an endless cycle of living and dying. A desperate race for success and survival with only the prospect of darkness at the end.  Instead by rising from the dead Jesus brought not only the good news of a God who loves us, but a God who wants to give us a new life as well.  A new life where death is not the end, but merely a gateway to a far greater life. The resurrection has not banished the darkness from our world, but it is a pledge that it will end. In the meantime Jesus holds out his hands to us and invites us to join him in this new life now.

Slightly more exciting than a bunny rabbit, wouldn’t you say.