Dear Friends,
There is fresh optimism as we face Easter 2022, we are preparing to share events that have not happened for two years, and I am waiting in eager anticipation as we journey through Lent. Looking back to Easter 2020, we were just a fortnight into the first lockdown, and we were starting to learn how to live, isolated in our own homes. I remember looking at my diary, filled with meetings, acts of worship, Lent groups, and a whole host of other events and suddenly none of them were happening. Being used to leading several services during Holy Week and on Easter Day, I found myself sitting at home instead of partaking in the events that had always been special.
By Easter 2021, we were in lockdown again, but by now, we had learned to be creative, and I was able to lead two services back-to-back, one in Knodishall near Leiston, over half an hour’s drive away from where I live, and the second in Ipswich immediately after and never even left the house, thanks to the wonder of Zoom. It felt very different but was the best we could manage given the circumstances.
Things look very different this year, it almost feels strange seeing people enter and leave supermarkets by the same door, the majority now without masks and we are starting to see things return to normal. For a great many years, I have seen the journey through Lent as a time of very mixed emotions. We are starting to see the signs of new life in the world around us, I can see buds appearing on the shrubs in our garden, small flowers coming back to life and the days lengthening, which all fuel my feelings of optimism.
As I write this letter, the Russian attack on Ukraine seems to escalate and that gives us a real cause for concern. There is the immediate concerns about refugees flooding out of the country, but there is also the long term impact this will have on the world at large, with energy cost already soaring and now set to rise even higher, the global world food shortage is now being made even worse and as we struggle to recover from the pandemic, the Russian situation is a major blow to the planet as a whole, not just Russia and Ukraine.
In these times of uncertainty in our nation and in the world, we need a risen Saviour more than ever before, the Church and the wider community need to be stronger than ever before, we can no longer simply say “this is happening fifteen hundred miles away, it is nothing of any concern for us” This Easter time we need to embrace the message of hope, of love and stand shoulder to shoulder to make a better world.
May God bless you in all you do.
Derek