Page 6 - The Parish News May 2019

CHURCH VIEWS
In the northern hemisphere, we are fortunate to celebrate Easter, the festival of new life, when all around us nature is bursting into life. Easter is not just one day. It is a whole season, lasting fifty days, all the way to the Feast of Pentecost (Whitsun).
Easter is all about looking forwards with hope to the future. For those who plant seeds a n d c r o p s , t h e r e i s t h e h o p e o f r e a p i n g a r e w a r d i n t h e fo r m o f a b e a u t i fu l a n d productive harvest. For us in our lives, we feel better when we are looking forward with a sense of purpose, with the feeling that we can contribute something positive to our family and our community. That’s why growing old can be a challenge. As we age we feel we can’t do all the things we used to be able to do. We have to learn to give up things - paid employment, maybe driving a car, maybe downsizing our home. We can either do this with good grace, or we can nurture a resentment that life feels too short and is unfair. Why does this have to happen to me? Yet the elderly have special things to give and share with the rest of the community. They are the guardians of the stories of the past, and in sharing them they pass on valuable wisdom to the younger generations. They can also teach those who are younger by setting an example in how to grow old gracefully, in the hope of the resurrection life that Jesus promises us all at Easter.
Margery Williams sums it up really well in her children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit: “Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but rEALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit. ‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’ ‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’ ‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
In Easter, God shows his love for us, and so our hope is renewed.
Andrew Sinclair
4 THE NEWS MAY 2019 www.thenewseec@gmail.com