Dear Friends,
In these next few days, millions of Christians, and we ourselves, will move our way one more time through the stages of the church’s holiest week. As we move toward Easter, we are also moving toward the arrival of growing warmth and the green of Spring. The fact that these twin events come nearly together is no accident. The events of Passion Week take place at the same time as Passover. Most Biblical scholars would concur that the Passover itself coincided with the age-old rite of Spring. This is why Easter is often called the Spring of Souls, a feast that we celebrate, appropriately enough, at the same time that new, green life is springing up from the ground.
The re-appearance of the beauties and aliveness of Spring reminds us of one of nature’s most hopeful lessons: that the processes of life are moved by a great guiding Hand and that all forms of life are deeply inter-dependent and inter-related. The flower draws life-energy from the sun, the bees from the flowers, other flowers from the bees, and so forth.
The invitation of Easter is not only to believe in this larger Hand of life, but to surrender to it. In a sense that is at least one part of how and why the resurrection was able to happen; because Christ surrendered himself so fully to the life and will of God. By giving our aliveness to and for a larger good, we share in sustaining the web of life that sustains us. When we grow in our own surrender we see more and more that God’s love is here for us in all places at all times. That’s what Easter is about-the triumph of Divine Love. And, as Saint John says, “The one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in that person.” (1 John 4:16)
May all our celebrations of this sacred season be rich with the power of God’s love, hope and enlivenment.
Your Pastor,
Tony Acheson
