Easter time is usually filled with friends, family and Easter egg hunts. This year many won’t have Easter eggs and many won’t have eggs at all. And, we won’t have each other as Covid19 keeps us apart. It is by keeping apart that we keep others safe.
For many, this is a time of tragedy and trauma, of separation and of suffering. We need to acknowledge this. But remember too that we are not alone. The world is united in these feelings.
Easter 2020 is not postponed or cancelled. As ever Spring and Easter is a time to think about new life, though it is hard to avoid the daily tally of those succumbing to Coronavirus, and worse, the numbers of those who are killed by it. This Easter time we are presented with death as well as life, but hold to love, for it is love that transcends the pain and grief of separation and death. If we speak of this to each other, of how much we appreciate each other, of how much we love each other, then we will be better able to face the future, and the joy of Easter will be with us once again. For it is love that casts out fear.
For those of you who have a Christian faith, these are words of comfort from Rev Maggie Stirling Troy (Acting Chair of Churches Together).
In Holy Week we walk with Jesus all the way to the Cross where he entered into the depths of human pain and suffering, unable to move, unable to breathe, his family unable to touch him. And yet the message of Easter is that darkness, fear and death do not have the final word. For Christians the Resurrection of Jesus turns the desolation of absence into the joy of his risen presence. Easter brings us hope of new life and the ultimate promise, in the words of Julian of Norwich (who lived when the Black Death was ravaging Europe) that ‘all shall be well’.