Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
Easter is quite early this year, and will truly be surrounded by signs of new growth as Spring bursts forth once again. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote:
"Twas Easter Sunday. The full-blossomed trees
Filled all the air with fragrance and with joy"
In a cemetery in Hanover, Germany, is a grave that has been disturbed by the growth of a tree in the very centre of it. On top of the grave were placed huge slabs of granite and marble cemented together and fastened with heavy steel clasps. It belongs to a woman who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet strangely, she directed in her will that her grave be made so secure that if there were a resurrection, it could not reach her. On the marker were inscribed these words: "This burial place must never be opened."
In time, a seed, covered over by the stones, began to grow. Slowly it pushed its way through the soil and out from beneath them. As the trunk enlarged, the great slabs were gradually shifted so that the steel clasps were wrenched from their sockets. A tiny seed had become a tree that had pushed aside the stones.
The dynamic life force contained in that little seed is a faint reflection of the tremendous power of God's creative word that someday will call to life the bodies of all who are in their graves. He will also bring back every person drowned at sea, cremated, or destroyed in some other way. This is no problem to the One who made something out of nothing when He brought the universe into existence, and who brought Jesus Christ back from the dead.
As Billy Graham once wrote: "There is more evidence that Jesus rose from the dead than there is that Julius Caesar ever lived or that Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three."
The journalist Frank Morison decided to investigate the life of Christ. The strangeness of the Resurrection story fascinated him, and, influenced by sceptic thinkers, he set out to prove that the story of Christ's Resurrection was only a myth. His research, however, led him to discover the truth of Christ's Resurrection in a moving, personal way, bringing him to a new and living faith, and resulting in him writing the book "Who Moved the Stone", which has become an international best seller.
Faith in the risen Christ opens the door to a living and loving relationship with Him, and all the blessings that His Resurrection guarantees, including a glorious new spiritual body when we die, and a home in heaven.
I wish you all a very happy Easter.