The past two years of Covid lockdown has had a greater effect on most of us than we probably realize. All of the controversies surrounding: required masking in public places, are the vaccinations really necessary or even effective for that matter, my individual rights vs our responsibilities to the wider community, and of course nearly a million lives lost to the Covid-19 virus, have left the world reeling and drowning in total confusion.

To be sure we have learned how to make necessary adjustments. Meetings of all types can now be held by Zoom. People can effectively work from home. Regular Sunday morning worship services are now live-streamed on FaceBook and YouTube, making us all televangelists. The Great Resignation empowered millions of people to leave behind dead end, unsatisfying low paying jobs, for new employment opportunities that offered hope for a better life. It would seem that life as we once knew it no longer exists. Put another way, the world before March of 2019 is dead.

So what comes next for us? As Christians we believe that with death, life has changed not ended. We are a people who believe in the Resurrection to new life. We are a people of real hope. We live for and into the promise of new life after death. It is what is means for us to be Easter people.

We are just beginning to emerge into a world of new life after having endured so much death. We are just starting to understand how the world has changed in ways we never once imagined were possible.

We got a sense of it this past Holy Week from Palm Sunday through Easter morning. Attendance at all the services were up. People were hungry for their souls to be fed. You could sense that many of us were clearly searching for some sort of way forward after experiencing so much death and loss. There was a real sense of new hope and new life that was present this particular Easter unlike those before.

As children of God, we understand that death no longer has dominion over us. Death doesn’t have the last word in our story. There really is new life after death. There really is a new life in the Resurrection. Considering all that we have been through over the last two years, that is Good News we can celebrate!

God’s Peace, Mark+