Trust Chaplain's Easter blog

I wanted to share with you some thoughts and reflections around Easter...

I imagine we all have our own ideas around the significance of Easter in our lives. For Christians it is the most important festival of the year. It is the foundation of our faith and commemorates the Resurrection of Jesus. 

We look forward to Easter - we may not fully experience the joy and celebration we’ve usually shared. It seems as a country we have found ourselves spiritually and physically in the dark shadows. But Easter challenges those shadows because it calls us to lift up our gaze, our imaginations, our hearts, our minds above all that is earth bound, passing away, to a new vision, a transformative vision. To look towards those who look to us, to recognise that hope is all around us, often in those small acts of kindness.

We see in this Easter season the true meaning of love, to risk and give everything for someone, and in time and turn receiving nothing for themselves. We are witnessing the meaning of the word love that love is vulnerable, it suffers and yet it takes risks. We see thousands of people coming forward to volunteer – our own NHS family members are prepared to risk suffering and have given their own lives in caring for their patients. Life for their families, friends and colleagues will never be the same again.

There were tears on that first Easter morning, just as there may be tears of personal loss for those who have lost dear ones.

We have been caught off guard by an unexpected turbulent crisis-but we have realised that we are all in the same boat, all of us are vulnerable and disorientated, but at the same time, important and needed, all of us are called to row together.

I was taken by Pope Francis speaking recently in Rome, he said:

‘We are woven together and sustained by ordinary people who do not appear on the front covers of magazines and newspapers or on the catwalks of the latest TV shows – but without any doubt in these days are writing the decisive events of our time. The doctors, nurses, care workers, cleaners, providers of transport, law and order, the armed forces, supermarket employees, volunteers and so many others who have understood that no one can achieve this on their own.’  

In the midst of all this when it seems there is a lack of tenderness or chances to meet up- there is still much to celebrate in our communities, the love of friends and families, the kindness of strangers. Nothing is lost, do not lose heart, do not be afraid, each of us is unique, made in love and called to life. Faith, hope and love give us back our often, complex and complicated lives. 

Finally, find psalm 23- written 3000 years ago, it is a shepherd’s song about real life, it speaks of suffering and of facing trouble, but it is full of love and hope.

Emma DAeth
Trust Chaplain