By Kate Wharton
Happy Easter! I do hope that today has been a day with some blessings, and some joy, and some peace – even though I recognise that it may also have been a day with some pain and some sadness. Even now, over a year into the pandemic, we’re not able to celebrate today as we would like to do, and that’s hard.
But – wherever we’ve spent today, whatever we’ve done, however we feel, this is still a day of joy and celebration, because it’s the day when we recall the most extraordinary event which has ever happened in the whole of human history.
At Easter we celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead, that death could not defeat him and the grave could not contain him. And as Christians we believe that Jesus is still alive today, and that he lives within us by his Holy Spirit.
However we’re feeling right now, whatever this weird lockdown time is like for us, that incredible truth can give us hope. And I don’t think I can remember a time when we needed hope more than we do right now.
Hebrews 10:23 says this: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” And in The Message version, it reads like this: “Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word.”
I like the idea of keeping a “firm grip” on God’s promises. Sometimes that’s just exactly what we need to do, isn’t it? Like a small child who holds on tightly to a grown-up’s hand when she feels scared, so do we hold on tightly to the promises which God has made to us, and which he will keep.
At the end of this ‘Moment’ I’m going to share the video of a song which you may know, as it’s one that we have in church. Appropriately, the title of the song is ‘Living Hope’, and it talks about how desperate our lives were without Jesus, and then describes how he stepped down into our world to save us. The verse of the song which is on the resurrection starts like this: “Then came the morning that sealed the promise…”
That’s what today is about. Easter Day is the moment that sealed the promise.
Over the next few months, until the summer, we will continue with Infinite Live on Zoom only (while very much hoping and praying that we’ll be able to return to onsite Infinite services in the autumn). Our theme during those months will be ‘hope’, as we continue to explore “the hope we profess” and all that it means.
So – Happy Easter, and may you know close by today the love of Jesus, our Living Hope: