An Easter Message from our Locum, Rev Liz Mack

EASTER GREETING TO NEW ABBEY

My Dear friends in New Abbey, thanks to my kind neighbours from Max West I am able to record this Easter Greeting to you...

It is so hard not to be together in Church, especially today when the great Resurrection Greeting...The Lord is Risen… He is risen indeed!!! would echo in Churches... all over the World!!

But wherever we are... as Christians this is the one sure thing

we can count on today…

The utter blackness of Good Friday for the Disciples cannot even

begin to be understood…their wondrous Hope that this man Jesus was actually the Long-awaited Messiah who had come to set his people free from Roman oppression had been decimated by his crucifixion on a Roman Cross... They had been so sure that their lives were about to be changed forever... They went home crushed.

Somehow lived through the silence and desolation of Saturday until

unbelievably, from the women going to anoint a broken body came the news that Jesus was no longer confined in a tomb but was somehow risen from the Dead…!! It was not possible… but as more and more met the Risen Christ in person they came to believe and indeed their lives... and all of us who believe... changed forever…

As we struggle through this time of blackness, uncertainty and loss we still have that unshakeable knowledge that Christ is not dead but risen and beside His Father in Heaven... promises to be with us through every moment... every day and every experience of our lives….

At the end of this desperate time...let us all pray that indeed lives will be changed forever… that people will have a new certainty and a new Hope through the never-failing love of God…

As we have supported one another and been supported through this time... may we show a new zeal for love and caring...

new ways of living and using the lives God has given us... for His glory and for the care of our brothers and sisters throughout the world...

Today let the Easter Greeting ring out… The Lord is Risen…!!

He is risen Indeed… Hallelujah….