As I write this it is Holy Saturday, Easter Eve, the middle of April. We have travelled far since Christmas, yet that doesn’t seem so long ago!
Even at Christmas time the shadow of the cross loomed behind the cradle, God’s Son was born to die, to take upon his shoulders the sin of the whole world, past, present and future.

Now we have travelled with Jesus through Holy Week, beginning with the cheers and shouts of ‘Hosanna,’ on Palm Sunday, through to the Last Supper that Jesus ate with his disciples on Maundy Thursday, and yesterday we remembered his death on the cross, the cruel nails piercing hands and feet and the crown of thorns adorning the head of God’s Son.
Today we wait, with Mary his Mother and with the disciples, knowing, yet hardly daring to believe, that tomorrow, on Easter Sunday, we shall be celebrating Christ’s Resurrection and the promise and hope of eternal life.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was a once for all time historical act, but the new life and rebirth is new each and every day from that first Easter onwards.
I think that this hymn, by J.M.C.Crum1872-1958, conveys all the hope and love that Jesus Christ gives to each and every one of us now and always.

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,

Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, Love whom men had slain,

Thinking that never he would wake again,

Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: Love is come again,

like wheat that springeth green.

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,

He that for three days in the grave had lain;

Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain,

Thy touch can call us back to life again;

Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

Love, prayers and blessings, Joy