Dear Friends,
This will be my final letter for a short while, because I am due to take a sabbatical during April, May and June. My plan is that we will be in Grassington, Wharfedale on Easter Sunday and my plan is to go to the Methodist Chapel in the little market town and attend Sunday worship. I anticipate there being something special as I sit alongside my wife during worship for a change, and I look forward to us receiving Holy Communion together, which again is something we seldom do.
I will miss some of the things that have become our regular traditions since moving to Ipswich though. It always strikes me that people from the community will gather together at Christmas for carol services and midnight communion services, but Easter has never been quite the same draw. I’m a morning person and over the years I have loved a sunrise service, normally on top of a hill, marking the beginning of a day that commemorates Christ rising from the dead.
For me, Easter has always been an important occasion, when I was a boy, my parents, brother, and I made our first annual pilgrimage to the coast. I can still remember being in Bridlington in the snow one Easter Saturday. My brother and I always received a box of half a dozen McIntosh’s toffee filled eggs, each slightly smaller than a Cadbury’s cream egg, which wasn’t introduced until 1963, so is sixty this year. We always went to Church for the eight o’clock communion, followed by a church breakfast, then the morning service.
In much the same way as with Christmas, Easter can be a time of recalling happy memories from times gone by and can be a time of making new memories today. For the Christian, Easter is one of the most important festivals of the year, I hope that you can spend a few moments remembering people, places, experiences, and events from your past and being thankful for them.
Maybe Easter 2023 is a time when you want to make new memories, why not plan to do something special this year to mark this important occasion.
With Easter greetings.
Derek