The Revs. Smiths’ Message for April 11, 2021

Dear Friends, 

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I Corinthians 15: 57

Easter changes everything.  Take everything you thought you knew about how you thought the world works—about how great stones stay where they are and don’t just get rolled aside, about death always having the last word, about you only get what’s coming to you, or that you just have to live with the fact that bad stuff happens.  Now look again because all is not as it appears.

Stones can be moved, Christ has defeated death and been raised, grace invades our lives with gift and beauty, and for every loss or tragedy that we face, there is the possibility of rising again, continuing on and finding that there is hope.  Through Christ, where we thought there was only death there is life.  For Paul, the only reason we can look at the brokenness of the world and the struggles of our existence and have any hope at all is found in the resurrection.   Death could not defeat Jesus and it has no ability ultimately to defeat us.

“Daffodils” (1888) by American-Canadian artist Mary Hiester Reid (1854–1921); from a private collection; taken from the Wikimedia Commons.

Easter speaks to us of endings and beginnings, of looking for something fresh and new, of seeking hope for a future which holds so many unknowns.  Surely that can be a welcome hope for us as a congregation as we seek to call a minister to help lead us into the mission that lies ahead of us.  And hope for us as part of the human family in the struggle to overcome the scourge of the COVID pandemic.  In all of it, the risen Christ is with us.

The last verse of that wonderful hymn “In the bulb there is a flower” says it well:
          In our end is our beginning,
          in our time, infinity,
          in our doubt there is believing,
          in our life, infinity,
          in our death, a resurrection,
          at the last a victory,
          unrevealed until its season,
          something God alone can see.

In Christ,

Revs. Bob and Helen Smith

A version of this message first appeared in the Saturday, April 11, 2021, edition of Tidbits.