Monthly Message (April 2010) - Easter

Dear Friends,

The outstretched arms of Jesus, hung upon the cross on the Friday, strangely embrace us even now. Widely reaching and vulnerable, he is giving, reserving nothing … abandoning all in the cause of love being offered, and offered again, even in return for death. Love that will not be overcome .. even by the deepest suffering.

A woman called Helen Waddell, a writer and Christian mystic, described the world as ‘God’s cross’. She saw the suffering of God as running right through creation, like the rings that travel up and down inside the trunk of a tall tree. Calvary, she said, is the bit we saw, where the trunk of a fallen tree is sliced through. …

….. and I like this picture. For it draws us, on Good Friday, standing in quietness contemplating the ugliness and beauty of the cross, into the here and now too. God is always bearing the cross in the suffering of the earth and is with us in our lives of richness and tragedy. God is always giving himself into the struggle with all that is evil or destructive. God is always loving … wide reaching, giving, offering … and as we stand at the cross we are gathered into the mysteries of that love that never gives up.

If then the Friday gives us a glimpse of the suffering love of God always running through creation …. Maybe this is a picture that gives something to our grasp of the Sunday story too. For the rings that run up and down a tree trunk are too the ways in which the whole tree is fed, enabled to grow, comes to flourishing … they are the life-lines. If the suffering of God runs throughout creation – so too does the life-giving energy of God, that feeding us brings new life.

Over the coming celebrations of Easter we shall wait in solemn stillness, bearing witness to the suffering love of God in Jesus … and we shall shout with the joy of resurrection, the transforming energetic love of God that brings the promise of renewal to the world. The Friday and Sunday stories give us a glimpse of that much bigger picture … that God is always carrying the suffering of the world … while God is always renewing life by the miracles of love and life.

As we live and celebrate Easter again … may we find our lives and our world renewed by the love that gives and never gives up.

Yours,

Tracey.