Easter Greetings to all of you. Going through my mother’s effects since her death on April 9th, I’ve found some treasures. Here’s a short reflection that my now late mother wrote several years ago for a Lenten Devotional Booklet published by Westminster Canterbury where she lived out her last years. It represents well, I think, how a person of faith can take the Easter message to heart. My mother’s words:

“Some days in our lives, we never forget. They are engraved forever in our hearts and minds. Jesus walked with His disciples for three years. They loved him and called him Lord. He was taken from them and crucified like a common criminal. Jesus’s followers denied him and hid. Then came Easter! Never again would they deny Him. His gift to us would continue throughout time and worlds.

Almost 2000 years later, our son, John, 10 years old, went out to play. He never came back. Hit by a car, he died 10 days later. I still see Jesus by our little boy’s bedside holding his hand, and I believe he led him home.

Our family, though devastated, was able to recover. We were able to talk about John, remembering his happy spirit. Helping us through all this were God’s people, those who could allow God’s Spirit (Christ’s Spirit) to work through them. Too numerous to name, they led each one of us through our tears, numbness, and stumbling, until we could stand again.

‘For lo, I am with you always.’ Thanks be to God!”

Lucille G. McAllister
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The Christian hope: By God’s grace, my mother has claimed another promise in the Easter Resurrection news – that nothing, not even our human death, can separate us from God’s love in the Risen One. For this Holy One, who promises to be with his own always, also promises that we may also always be with him. The powerful love of God enfleshed in Christ crucified and Risen has been experienced by his beloved ones again and again through the centuries. My prayer is that all of us may experience this divine love according to our need and be able to live as Easter people because we have.

Pastor Ruth