Dear Friends,
As you read this, Easter will have arrived. We have waited for it, we have prepared for it in our Lent courses, our extra readings and our activities; now all of nature seems to say, “The season of cold and darkness is over, the weeks of wrestling between winter and spring are past, and once again, spring has won.

Against all expectations, even the coldest of winters could not destroy our native wildlife. We had a very sad time in January and February, when our pond was covered in ice for too long, and as soon as the ice had gone, we fished one dead goldfish and 16 dead frogs out of the pond. The water looked black and completely life-less. We wondered if animal life would ever return to the pond. And then, one day last week, there was unmistakeably a clump of frogspawn. The next morning at sunrise, I heard some croaking and saw two heads bobbing out of the pond. And today, I counted 12 frogs and four clumps of spawn. Where did they all come from? How had they all survived the extreme cold? And what would they find to eat now? Working in the garden today, I came across creepy-crawlies galore. Nature is indeed coming back to life.
Easter is on one level symbolic of the re-awakening of nature, and that is the festival’s popular appeal. But on another level, it tells us of a much deeper, much stronger life-force: Jesus went through the ultimate suffering, even death, and against all expectations he was raised to new life on Easter Day. This is more astonishing than the spectre of nature coming back to life after a harsh winter. Our common sense tells us that such things don’t happen: when someone is dead, that’s the end of their life.

Yet, this once, it did happen: Jesus was raised to new life, his love was stronger than all his enemies, even stronger than death. And with him, we his followers, have the promise of life in him, life of a new, eternal quality.
No wonder Easter is the greatest festival in the Christian calendar.

Have a Happy Easter,

Franziska