In a weekly church column usually published in the Medway Messenger, Cllr Trevor Clarke, Coordinator of Medway Prayer Net, reflects on how patience will reap rewards.

Well things are certainly different this year, not least in the amazing weather. Medway’s gardens have probably rarely looked better, if only there were flights to view them from!

Easter was a different time too. Like many Christians, I held my own communion – a Warburton’s thin with blackcurrant squash, no red wine available sadly, followed an online service, joined in with some YouTube worship videos and even caught Songs of Praise.

As the whole world waits and hopes for things to return to normal, I thought back to that original Easter Saturday in AD 30-odd.

That day, sandwiched between the Crucifixion on Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, is often skirted over by the busyness of the season.

With all meetings and visits banned this year, the whole period took on the feel of that in-between day, something terrible had happened and we were unsure about what the future held.

The early disciples, fresh from abandoning Jesus at the Cross were similarly holed up in terror, dreams crushed, futures uncertain and consciences wracked by all manner of guilt, regret and bewilderment over the seeming fate of the man they had called Messiah.

In this present time, many are isolated in grief and afraid for those they love. Some grapple with their own failures, having discovered that they’re not as strong or invulnerable as they thought they would be in a crisis. And some will be feeling an absence of God, unable to reconcile the events they’re going through with His good plan.

But being unable to make sense of what is going on around us does not mean that God’s plan has failed. What looked to the disciples like ultimate failure proved to be just a time of waiting that would be temporary.

The Resurrection followed, Jesus ascended to Heaven, the church was born and began its lifelong mission of sharing the hope of eternal life with the risen Lord Jesus Christ that is still preached and believed by multitudes today.

Seen through the small, apparently insignificant acts of kindness, faithfulness and love so many are carrying out around us, there is another narrative out there to the media obsession with apocalypse now. Fear of death is part of life, but left unchecked and unchallenged it can paralyse us and sneakily convince us that it has the final word. It doesn’t. We know that Christ has risen.

While we grieve for those we lose, and we do grieve, we do not grieve without hope. We pray that the security of the life we have grown accustomed to will return swiftly but when it does, may these unique times not have left us like those frightened disciples on Easter Saturday but instead like those same born-again men on Easter Sunday who could see the bigger picture and the part God so lovingly wanted them to play in it.

If you would like to find out more about Churches Together In Medway or what it means to become a Christian, please contact the chairman, Pastor Stephen Bello on 01634 920491 or rccgvictoriousfamily@hotmail.com. You can also click here.

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