Love lives again

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green...

(From the Easter hymn Now the Green Blade Riseth)

Easter Sunday morning 2018

Good Friday was an unremittingly grey, sodden, depressing day; the sort which should belong only to winter, but which somehow insinuates itself into spring and summer too. At around midday, as the rain eased slightly, I went out for a short, soggy walk. The sky was dully leaden, and, despite splashes of colour, even the air seemed grey, uniformly grey... until I turned the corner back into my road and saw the magnolia, its branches thrust triumphantly against the sky... and in a moment, the greyness parted, and spring's promise in rosy-white blossoms prevailed.

And somewhere within me, I heard Love lives again. 

And that is the hope and the promise of Easter for us all: that despite evil's best efforts, Love lives again, and somehow prevails; somehow parts the ugliness and ushers in the loveliness and the goodness of new life.

Today, and every day, may Love live again... may Love never die... wherever there is kindness and tenderness, sacrifice and solidarity. May Love live again, and again, in every effort for a better world, in every striving for justice and every move towards peace.

And may Love, and Love's hope and promise, live again - live anew - in our hearts and in our homes, and, through us, in each of our corners of a world so desperately in need of the hope and the promise of Easter.