View from the Vicarage

New Beginnings Easter is indeed a time for new beginnings. We celebrate the new life and hope that Jesus gave to the world when he was raised from the dead in such a remarkable way.

Our Christian festivals give shape to our calendar years. As we progress through the year we move from Jesus birth, to his passion and death and then his resurrection.

Then 40 days later Jesus returns to his Father and the Holy Spirit is released on all his followers.

Each festival has its awesome moment which draws us in to the bigger story and its impact on our world.

Somehow this last year has been fashioned by an invisible but powerful virus that has caused havoc on a global scale. Wrecking economies, families, and education. Its easy to think that such events define our lives but we have only to turn to the Bible to realise that these interruptions in our lives are to be expected. They have always been so as past generations had to live through wars, others had to survive plagues which swept across Europe and many lives were wrecked by the depression, and Wall Street crash.

As God’s people we have to keep our eye on our goal of living in the light of the new life he has given us through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It was this new life that sustained the disciples when Jesus was so cruelly taken away from them after just 3 years of ministry.

God sustained the early church through waves of oppression with world leaders determined to rid the world of this New Way.

Strangely it was just a relative handful of disciples that carried the good news of Jesus forward after his death. There were probably just 130 followers of Jesus at the time of his death so when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and 5,000 turned to him that was a huge increase in the church.

Today Christians are joined across the globe by a single desire to live out the new life that Jesus has implanted in our lives. Without it we are lost and we will just wait on the sidelines for the next pandemic or world disaster to hit us.

Its only through knowing Jesus and his sovereign power in our lives that we can look forward confidently in these uncertain days.

John Rennie