Isn’t it amazing how a few days of sunshine cheer everyone up, and how even after all that rain the ground seems to have recovered and the gardens are ready for planting. There is an old gardening saying, you may know it, ‘fog in March frost in May’ so watch out for the second week in May, as we had a couple of foggy days in March, and be prepared to look after your tender plants.
Spring has sprung in the church too, for later this month the churches will burst into flower as they are decorated to celebrate the season of Easter. We remember how the disciples changed from being upset on Good Friday to rejoicing that Jesus had risen from the dead just a few days later and had appeared to them, personally.
Many of us can recall moments in our lives that seem like ‘a Good Friday moment’ when all seems lost and against us, it’s at times like these that we take comfort and indeed excitement from the whole Easter story. Winter turns into spring, Lent turns into Easter, each needs the other however hard and impossible that seems sometimes.
I think of my Granddad’s Grandfather clock, if the clock was allowed to chime every quarter hour, it meant the clock had to be wound up every single day, if however you let it just chime the hours then you could have a few days off from winding it up, the spring would last a little longer. In this day and age with all the digital clocks and watches that never need winding, we perhaps have lost the association with spring and energy and the passage of time.
Lent provides us with days when we can look forward to Easter and days when we can wind ourselves up for the most Holy week of the Christian calendar. Every year I invite you to come along on this pilgrimage with me as we follow our Lord’s last days and come to that wonderful day of resurrection. How about joining me this year? Enter into this passage of time that the church through the centuries has kept special, and let the words ‘were you there when they crucified my Lord’ touch your very heart and the words of Mary Magdalene ‘I have seen the Lord’ energise you to go and tell others about this whole Easter experience that springs forth from the liturgy of the church.
Last year early on Easter Day I stood outside my back door and turned up Radio 4 really loud, with no apologies to my near neighbours, for early on Easter Day Radio 4 plays the verse of ‘Jesus Christ is Risen today, Alleluia!’ How about joining me with that too and let all of St Ippolyts and Great and Little Wymondley hear that Spring has sprung.
For we are an Easter People and Alleluia! is our song.
Enjoy all those Easter Eggs too.
With love
Revd Ann
