Events

“From Nothing to Everything, from Despair to Hope: What Makes You Want To Sing Alleluia”

Easter Sunday 20th April
10am Queens Road Unitarian Free Church, Urmston
11.30am Dunham Road Unitarian Chapel, Altrincham
11.30am on Zoom ID 841 9082 8195 no password required 

All are most welcome...Come as you are, exactly as you are...but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition...

Please find below an extract from the service...

Today is Easter, let us rejoice and be glad; let us celebrate the joy that is this day whatever it may mean to us. For no matter the conditions of our lives, the state of our hearts. The lives of those dear to us and the struggles in this our shared world, the spirit of Easter can be born again and anew, in our hearts and lives. Life continues. Spring is here, the new life cannot be denied. Easter is here, let us rejoice and sing Alleluia!!! 

And what is Easter? Well it is different, perhaps unique for each and every one of us. What makes you want to rise up and sing Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia?

What is your song, the one that makes you want to feel like you belong. I was lovingly listening to the new bird song on Wednesday, it made me want to sing alleluia. 

I believe that each of us have a song in our hearts, that will bring us hope when hope is hard to find. We need to find a way to learn it, sing it and share it and thus help one another through those dark times, to times of love and joy, so we can enjoy the milk and honey. So that we can bring the spirit of Easter alive in us and through us.

For we all experience alleluia moments, isn’t this the heart of Easter;  We all have alleluias in our lives, those moments of triumph and wonder, of insight and rebirth; we all have alleluia’s, those moments of transformation, when our way of being in the world is fundamentally changed; alleluia moments when we are strengthened and life is deepened; alleluia moments when we feel more connected, more whole; we all have moments when we want to sing alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

That said there cannot be Easter without Good Friday. Hope is born from Despair. Easter begins with an empty tomb and fear. It is often the same with all life, this is the universal message of Easter.
Sometimes our most profound transformations emerge out of the loss we face in life. This may be the empty hole left by grief, at the loss of a beloved, something so many are facing. Or it may be one of those thousands of lesser losses we experience in life. All forms of grief are barren, empty places. They can feel utterly God-forsaken, where all hope is gone, that leave us in sorrow and suffering not singing songs of alleluia, but instead singing song of lamentation.

This though is not the end. Feeling forsaken is not the same as being forsaken. The message of Easter is that love triumphs over death. That new life is born again, like those spring buds of hope, or the poppy born out of the battlefields of the First World War. Hope is born once again from the despair, just as life continues on into this awakening Spring. The Cherry blossom has been and almost gone, but it will return once again.

The Universal message of Easter is the power of love coming back to life, transforming in new and wonderful ways. It can happen at any time in our lives. Easter implores us to live, to allow the renewal and resurrection of our souls, to risk living life alive, fully alive, to love abundantly. To risk our hearts in love. To take the seeds that are planted in us, water and nurture them until they blossom and can be handed to another. To take the gift of blossoms and warm them with the sunshine of our souls and the rain of our energy, until they bring forth fruit.

Easter begins with an empty tomb, but that ending is just another beginning. Life continues on, in fact new life is born again in the emptiness and the loneliness and the despair.