Dear Friends,

This year, the month of March sees the beginning and end of Holy Week. At its start, Jesus and the Passover Crowd are outside Jerusalem. They greet him as their King, as he rides into the City on the back of a donkey.

Within a matter of days, however, everything will change. Members of the same crowd will turn against him. Jesus will be betrayed by one of his closest friends, denied by another and then arrested, all in matter of hours. He will then be tried before an illegal sitting of the Sanhedrin and found guilty on trumped up charges of blasphemy, before being handed over to Pilate, the Roman governor, who has him scourged, flogged and executed, even though he knows Jesus is innocent of the charges brought against him. What an incredible week!

But the story does not end there. Jesus is taken down off the cross, on which he had died and is placed in a tomb, which is sealed by a circular mill stone that is placed in front of it and guarded by Roman Soldiers. On the third day after his death, the mill stone is found to have rolled to one side. The tomb is empty. Jesus has risen again just as he said he would and appears alive to Mary in the garden where the tomb is situated. He then appears to the rest of his disciples.

Death had not been able to hold Jesus back. By rising again, on Easter Day, Jesus had defeated death and proved it was not the end, but the beginning of life lived in a new way.

That Jesus rose again on should not surprise us. Nothing could hold Jesus back.  Jesus was no mere mortal.  He was the Son of God, the longed for Messiah who by his death and resurrection had proved to the world who he had claimed to be, all along. He had come from God to obtain forgiveness for humanity’s wrongdoing and to restore the world’s broken relationship with his heavenly Father to enable Men and Women to share in eternal life with him, both in this life and in the next.     

None of us deserve to be forgiven. But because of Jesus’ great love for us and because of God’s abundant mercy and grace shown to us as a result of what happened on the cross, we can be. That still has to be the best news of all: Each of us matters so much to God that he sent his only Son to die and rise again for us! Good News indeed!

A Happy Easter to you all!

God bless,

Andrew